AU Optronics (AUO) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) received a Statement of Objections from the EU Commission regarding a price-fixing cartel of several LCD panel makers. AUO announced that it will reply after closely reviewing the document while CMO stated that the company will fully cooperate with the EU Commission’s investigation.
LG Display, Sharp, Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) plead guilty to price fixing charges made by the US District Court in San Francisco in 2008 and paid a fine totaling US$585 million. Hitachi Display also paid a US$31 million fine in March 2009 after pleading guilty.
A fine of several hundreds of millions of dollars for AUO and CMO will have a significant impact on their bottom line. The EU investigation has come at a critical juncture as LCD manufacturers are just turning the corner toward profits. It is interesting that Samsung, the largest LCD manufacturer in the world, has not been charged yet.
Ah, so this is what the real thing looks like: LG‘s Black Label BL-40. Some say it is LG’s next Chocolate phone. The unique feature of the BL-40 is the 21:9 ultrawide aspect ratio with a 800 x 345 resolution (landscape). The UI seems to be LG’s S-Class with a 5 megapixel camera coupled with a Schneider Kreuznach lens. There is also WiFi and a FM transmitter so you can listen to your music in your car via FM radio. I hope there’s a decently-powered media player that can playback ripped DVDs as the resolution is almost perfect for it. What I am curious about is whether or not the average user with average-sized hands can thumb-type in landscape mode with its ultrawide stance.
Short and sweet: 4-inch 21:9 multitouch display with tempered scratch-proof glass. Flash UI, HSDPA 7.2, WiFi, A-GPS and a whole lot more. Looks awesome.
Vertically Capable 130mm or 5.12-inches. That’s the vertical range that the SyncMaster F2380 has. The smaller 20-inch F2080 has it too. Samsung incorporated a telescoping mount, which I think is a wonderful idea and much better than other height-adjusting methods. Looks good too.
S-PVA Viewing angles are 178/178. Contrast ratio is 3000:1. Samsung says that dynamic contrast ratio is 150,000:1, but that’s just marketing speak–don’t put too much faith in that. The 178/178 viewing angles suggest that the F2380 is using the company’s S-PVA LCD panel. And that’s important when you pivot this 23-inch monitor. Monitors using TN (like the one I have: HP w2408) is simply terrible in portrait mode.
Thin Bezel I do not like thick bezels, which reminds me of monitors of yore. The F2380 has a bezel that is just 15mm or 0.59-inch. The LCD is also almost flush with the bezel with the difference at just 2.5mm or slightly less than 0.1-inch. These specs might not sound that big of a deal, but when you put these next to thick-bezeled monitors the difference is night and day. A thin bezel makes multi-monitor solutions much better: there is less of a break between content and the physical chassis takes less space.
16:9 This is unfortunate. Samsung bills the F2380 (and F2080) as a business monitor and yet the LCD sports a 16:9 aspect ratio. I’m not sure what Samsung’s product planning team was thinking. I don’t think IT managers or any executives in a company would want workers to be thinking that they should watch 1080p HD content on their brand new 16:9 monitors from Samsung. I’m guessing the resolution is 1920 x 1080 for the F2380.
100% sRGB Color professionals rejoice: color gamut is improved, I think, to 100% sRGB. What is it in NTSC? Or is that spec not important anymore?
The price is KRW450,000 (about US$345) for the F2380 and KRW378,000 (about US$290) for the F2080.
Need to drive four 30-inch monitors at 2560 x 1600? Don’t want to get two graphics cards? Don’t have the motherboard that supports two PCIe x16 connections? Matrox has the solution: M9148 LP PCIe x16. It has four DisplayPort connections that can each drive resolutions up to 2560 x 1600. Beautiful. The M9148 comes with 1GB of memory and features a low-profile form factor. Thanks Paul for the tip!
