Monitoring

Given that VAT is forecast to increase in the budget, Nomad has been urgently looking for something to spend his money on. Obviously he would like a Google TV box but that may not be available at any price for another 12 months. An upgrade of the monitor seemed a plausible project however, the existing 22" monitor being a little small for the distance it is used at.

We recommend buying a monitor with native 1920x1080 pixel resolution (16x9 aspect ratio). This will give the best results when viewing Full HD output (Blu-Ray for example). You can expect that Full HD TVs will provide this resolution and aspect ratio however monitors may not as they are typically driven from a PC video card. The other vital consideration for a monitor is that it has a HDMI input; this will allow connection of the Google TV box when it arrives.

Incidentally, for those of you who have not followed the plot from the start, we do recommend buying a monitor instead of a TV. Operating a TV, even one disconnected from an RF input (aerial) gives TV Licensing a possible line of attack should they ever knock on the door.

Nomad rather liked the Iiyama 26" monitor. However this had a 1920x1200 pixel resolution (16x10 aspect ratio). A Full HD picture would therefore either have been distorted or left part of the screen blank depending on the settings.

So in the end Nomad bought the Iiyama ProLite B2712HDS-B1 27" Widescreen Monitor (B2712HDS-B1). So far it is working well.

The Datasonic 22" monitor will now become the monitor for the PC, displacing a CRT monitor which was a castoff from work.