Thread: Buying a Monitor (dynamic contrast ratios?)

Originally Posted by Veovis

True. 22" 1680x1050 is also perfect for desktop viewing distance IMO. Any bigger would be overkill for me. Only downside is that all 22" panels right now (with like one or two exceptions) are TN panels, which have shitty viewing angle and color reproduction... but most gamers won't notice or mind.

True about the TN panel image quality, but from what I understand, they have a much faster response time than that other type of panel, which makes them much better for gaming. The name of the other panel type is slipping my mind...active something or other.

there is no industry standard for contrast, so manufatuers can say what ever they want pretty much. meaning what samsaung says is 3000-1 might be acers 1000-1

for monitors 700-1000-1 is good anythign better is not anything you can see unless you viewing blu ray and such

for tvs have much higher contrasts for scan reslults 1080i or 1080p so anything better then 2000 is good.

just google it somthing i picked out real fast that nutshells the issue

How much of a difference does the contrast ratio on LCD TVs make? Is 8000:1 really that much better than 1000:1 for contrast, and worth the extra price?


Contrast ratio is perhaps the most misleading and overhyped data when it comes to televisions. In theory, contrast ratio measures the difference between the brightness in the super-bright portions of a screen vs. the super-dark portions. A 1000:1 contrast ratio would mean that a perfectly white pixel is 1000 times brighter than a perfectly black pixel.

That's the theory, anyway. The problem is that these brightness levels are hard to calculate, and they're subject to all sorts of interpretation. Ultimately, contrast ratio has become little more than marketing-speak, and the numbers are now largely meaningless. Things have gotten out of control to the point where various vendors have claimed 1,000,000:1 contrast ratios. It's getting to the point where escalating contrast ratios are now an industry joke, though not a very funny one.


Gizmodo has an extensive piece on the topic, which rightly points out that high contrast ratios don't mean high brightness. Rather, companies have focused more recently on decreasing the brightness of the "1" side: making the blacks blacker instead of the whites whiter. As the post notes, "Cutting the darkest dark on a screen by .5 effectively doubles the contrast ratio." In comparing an 8000:1 TV to a 1000:1 TV, you're probably looking at a TV that the manufacturer claims has richer, truer blacks.

Of course, it may not. The numbers could be calculated differently, inflated, who knows. You'll need an independent source (probably from a high-end home theater publication) to get a real sense of a TV set's contrast, but even then the numbers probably wouldn't be very meaningful because of the difficulties in performing such a test.


Ignore manufacturer's contrast levels and focus instead on how a TV looks to your eyes, whether it has the connections you need, and if it's the right size for your room.