Why you gotta remind me all I see is the black light or the light tinge around the perimeter of the monitor. I feel your pain as I just remembered you're in europe now. If ever find another GDM fw900 I will go half and half on the shipping if you want. They are easily still one of the best to use and I had one personally calibrated to max as I had access to the back port and colorimeter with cal and spyder software.
Thanks for the Kuro recommendation might have to invest in one for casual play. Had a friend recommend that as of late and thinking odd conincidence to hear it so soon again.
Yeah, I'm dying for a GDM fw900 right now. When I moved I had to leave my CRT collection behind. The LCDs are certainly useful for the work I do now, no doubt, but they sapped my will to ever play games from my desk. It sucks as I used to be huge into PC games but once LCDs took off it absolutely ruined my love of desk gaming. :\
The Kuro isn't perfect, obviously, as it still has a bit of image noise inherent in plasmas when viewed from close proximity (I sit about 5ft away so it's not an issue but if you sit closer it can be noticed). Also, motion isn't perfect. Motion resolution is still very good but CRTs and lightboosted monitors are better. Since I mostly only play single player games, however, the motion is more than adequate and every other aspect of the display is so good. I've spent some time playing with an LG OLED TV recently and, of course, other portable OLED displays. They're great and I hope they replace LCD eventually, but the black levels aren't actually completely black. It's very comparable to a Kuro. If you have a tiny bit of bias lighting (even a strip of blue LEDs) behind the TV the Kuro appears 100% dark when black areas are displayed. As a result, everything really feels vibrant and rich.
I mirror everything on my PC and it is not in the same room so I can easily watch all three at once. It's even more eye opening when you see them side by side. Black screens on the LCDs are basically gray in comparison. The IPS 1440p LCD is actually far and away the worst of the bunch in this regard. Just abysmal. My 680 can't handle games at 1440p very well, though, so I wouldn't use it anyways. I recently replayed Thief II and that, more than anything, really demonstrated why I cannot stand this problem. LCD backlights actually destroy atmosphere. Thief was one of the most atmospheric games of its day and, on the right display, still can be. On an LCD, though? So much is lost. The same is true of any horror/dark game, really.
It's great that you can appreciate a good display, though, as most people these days can't and it's made me take a knee-jerk reaction against LCDs. I'm really super bummed that they've basically taken over the industry and lament the fact that most R&D money goes into fixing inherently broken LCD technology. Lightboost is great but it still requires extra hardware to function. It's not something an LCD can achieve on its own.
Between LCD and the movement towards all digital games I've become rather negative on the PC side and these threads really trigger that. I'm just the old man yelling at the cloud now. I really support consoles primarily based on the fact that I can still purchase boxed products that work without a back-end connection. Had Microsoft's plan taken off I would have very much avoided the system altogether.
They should use the ps4 price if they're going to do this. For $400 you're going to have a pretty crappy system. Even if the PC matches the performance, they just are not as easy to use in the living room as a console.
This is true. As someone who has been using a PC in the living room since 2003, I've yet to find a truly perfect solution for all situations. Once you're in game using a controller, it's great, but there are a lot of things that pop up which demand alternative input. I've taken to using a Lenovo keyboard/trackpad combo that's basically a wide remote. It's not good for gaming but it works well in allowing all other functions to be possible very easily.
