Monitor turning into a mirror

[Paperclip]

One thing I hate about dark levels in FPSes primarily is that they turn your monitor into a fucking mirror depending on how much ambient light you have. Combined with the darkness sometimes it makes you just can't see a damn thing. Turning off the room light usually is my solution but in the evening it's just uncomfortable. Increasing the brightness level is just derp. Is there a magical solution that I don't know yet to prevent this from happening? I can imagine building a box around the monitor but that's just not practical.

 

[sea]

 

[Secretninja]

Don't buy shitty glossy monitors.

 

[ChristofferC]

Don't buy shitty glossy monitors.

 

[Suchy]

it's like every post-2006 monitor out there is now glossy, because it became trendy. Fucking Applefags.

 

[Baron]

I got offered the matte or glossy monitors and I said to the sales guy, ?
And he goes, "Well, everyone is buying the glossy monitors."
I took one look at them, and thought

Don't buy shitty glossy monitors.

 

[Gord]

Don't buy shitty glossy monitors.

 

[aron searle]

Try buying a laptop, when I went into PC world the option was glossy screen or glossy screen.

 

[DraQ]

it's like every post-2006 monitor out there is now glossy, because it became trendy. Fucking Applefags.

This.
And I'm currently using laptop, so non-glossy screen is not an option.

 

[Spectacle]

The trick to finding matte screens these days is often to look in the "business" section, that goes for both monitors and laptops. Consumer shit tends to be gloss for the "ooh shiney" effect.

 

[Trash]

You shouldn't have moved out of the basement, bro.

 

[DraQ]

A solution exists if one want to play Mac fucking Gyver.

It requires attaching a smooth sheet of translucent, matte plastic foil (like in those plastic sleeves for various documents, only finer - the one used in sleeves eliminates gloss pretty well, but it randomly magnifies sub-pixels, so the picture will be speckled with RGB shit) over your screen so that it touches the surface.

 

[Menckenstein]

 

[Konjad]

The trick to finding matte screens these days is often to look in the "business" section, that goes for both monitors and laptops. Consumer shit tends to be gloss for the "ooh shiney" effect.

True, but then in business section there are laptops with only shitty graphic cards which will make you play nothing never than morrowind.

 

[Bruticis]

Yes, stop buying cheap, shitty TN panel displays. Also, get this http://store.antec.com/Product/soundsci ... 020-0.aspx with the right environment (i.e. your display is against a light colored wall), it's works great. I love mine, best 10 bucks I've spent.

 

[sea]

The trick to finding matte screens these days is often to look in the "business" section, that goes for both monitors and laptops. Consumer shit tends to be gloss for the "ooh shiney" effect.

True, but then in business section there are laptops with only shitty graphic cards which will make you play nothing never than morrowind.

It's better to say to look for monitors from the business line, not necessarily the business section of a store. Samsung tends to divide their monitors up this way, and while I haven't ever seen one that's glossy, usually their business side are a bit more balanced overall. I imagine that applies to several other manufacturers as well.

That said, there's a few things to look for in a monitor. IPS panels tend to be more expensive and not quite as fast as far as response time goes, but they tend to have far better colour depth and don't wash out in dark scenes. You should also look for monitors that prioritise good colour reproduction, rather than consumer-grade ones loaded with lots of features, because typically the price is kept higher on a lot of crappy monitors by the inclusion of a bunch of extra crap, when in fact the panel is nothing at all to write home about. It's possible that going for LED backlighting rather than a conventional bulb will have an effect as well, possibly allowing for more even distribution of light behind the monitor that may help minimise the problem. Last, take your time and look up detailed reviews on them... there are a few sites that offer very detailed analyses of monitors, including colour graphs at various levels of brightness and white balance, response times, etc., and I find they are indispensable for getting a good impression of a monitor, especially when so many monitor reviews out there just amount to "it looks good/bad".

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Color neutrality is extremely important imo. A lot of times the factory default is set to some kind of artificial XTREEEME dynamic movie color preset that just whores everything up.

 

[sea]

Yeah, I think I spent close to a week calibrating my monitor after I got it. It's really worth taking the time to balance things out if you care about getting a nice, balanced and lifelike image... it's really off-putting just how bad some default setups are. Most monitors at least have some decent profile presets (i.e. "warm" or "movie") that bring them in line with better standards.

 

[Gord]

For those speaking german, i found the forums at www.prad.de quite helpful when I bought my last monitor.
If you are lucky, someone has even gone through the color calibration and posted some values you can use as long as you are not into (semi-)professional photo editing or anything and anyway have to do it on your own.

 

[LordDenton]

I always wonder why people buy glossy monitors...

I mean, you would have to be a complete retard to opt for a monitor that reflects everything just because it looks prettier. My matte monitor, on the other hand, is perfect in both daylight and complete darkness.

 

[Rogue]

Why is glossy so trendy? What are the advantages besides the fact that you can look at yourself all day long and see how sexy and awesome you are? I fucking hate glossy monitors. At home it can be tolerated (while still hated deeply) but thank god my laptop doesn't have one, because I lug it around a lot and often use it when lighting is anything but ideal and I'd be fucking blind. If there are no new laptops with non-glossy displays then I won't ever sell my precious.

 

[Gord]

Supposedly contrast or colour brilliance is better or something like that.
Helps an awful lot if you can't see anything because of the reflections...

 

[Micmu]

They are easier to clean.


That's it.