1. All of Apple’s Cinema Display monitors feature widescreen design, with 20-, 23-, and 30-inch LCDs optimized for image editing. The two larger models can display HDTV content.
2. Dell’s flagship flat panel LCD is the 30-inch UltraSharp 3007WFP, with panoramic 2560 x 1600 resolution (requiring a deluxe dual-link DVI graphics card), a tilt/swivel/heightadjustable base, and four USB ports.
3. Eizo Nanao Corp. specializes in precise color-calibrationcapable monitors for graphics professionals. The 19-inch, 1280 x 1024-pixel ColorEdge CG19 offers a 10-bit color lookup table with choice of sRGB, custom, or calibration-tuning brightness levels.
4. The Gateway FPD2185W is a 21-inch widescreen (1680 x 1050) LCD with a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, landscape/portrait pivoting, and a handy array of VGA, DVI, SVideo, composite, and component inputs.
5. Seen here in both standard landscape and page-friendly portrait mode, HP’s LP2065 is a 20-inch, standard-aspectratio (1600 x 1200) display that’s switchable between two inputs—your desktop and laptop computers, for instance.
6. Available with or without a hardware color calibrator, the LaCie 321 is a 21.3-inch LCD monitor designed for color-accurate soft proofing. This model is advertised as having a CRT-grade color gamut (72 percent of the NTSC palette).
7. Tilt-, swivel-, height-, and pivot-adjustable, the Samsung Sync- Master 204B is a 1600 x 1200 flat panel with an 800:1 contrast ratio and super-thin (just over half an inch) bezel that makes it ideal for side-by-side tiling of two displays.
8. With 1920 x 1200 pixels spread over a 23-inch screen, ViewSonic’s VP231wb is a high-end widescreen display with digital and analog inputs. One caveat: It’s capable of portraitmode pivoting, but this feature is supported only on PCs, not Macs.

Three tech types
An LCD monitor’s feature list should say which of three liquid crystal technologies it uses. If it doesn’t, the display is probably the cheapest and most common, twisted nematic (TN). TN offers quick response but not the best contrast ratio or viewing angle. Color reproduction is mediocre. Some TN screens can’t display all 16.7 million colors, slipping to 16.2 million or using dithering—rapid alternation of two colors to make a pixel appear to be a third color—to mimic 24-bit color.

Two high-end alternatives top TN’s performance, though there’s no decisive winner between the two:
• Vertical alignment, identified as MVA (multidomain vertical alignment) and S-PVA (super-patterned vertical alignment), offers sharp contrast and image quality with wide viewing angles.
• Flat panels aimed at professionals often use in-plane switching (IPS) technology, which boasts superb CRT-class color reproduction, wide gamuts and viewing angles, and dark blacks. Response time has caught up to TN speeds, though contrast and brightness don’t quite match the best VA panels.

SIDEBAR: Plugging Them In
LCDs are digital devices, but inexpensive models use the same analog signals as good old CRTs, usually via VGA (Video Graphics Array) cables that end in 15-pin D-sub connectors. Changing analog to digital data for display is a bit inefficient, but modern monitors are good at it; most monitors plugged into a VGA connection receive plug-and-play info that adjusts and centers the screen instantly.

Mainstream flat panels have—and can switch between—analog and digital inputs. The latter use the DVI (Digital Video Interface) connector found on a growing number of midrange and high-end computer graphics adapters. DVI comes in two flavors: DVI-D carries only digital data, and DVI-I can transfer both digital and analog info. HP’s LP2065 monitor makes things easy by providing two DVI-I jacks plus two DVI-I-to-VGA and two DVI-I-to- DVI-D cables, so it can accommodate any pair of video sources (both your desktop and laptop PCs, for instance).

Dual-input monitors usually let you use their front-panel controls to flip between two images or arrange them in a side-by-side or picture-in-picture view. The latter is particularly tempting if one input is a TV signal: Some flat panels team VGA and/or DVI connectors with S-Video or component video inputs, while some such as Sony’s MFM-HT205 are monitor/TV combos with built-in TV tuners (for now, just NTSC analog instead of HDTV tuners).

One monitor for everything?
It’s just as well that hardworking designers would never dream of watching TV—especially HDTV—on the job, because the outlook for viewing HD content on a PC screen is cloudy: While a few monitors sport the HDMI (High Definition Media Interface) connectors seen on the latest HDTV sets, Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Vista won’t show HD video on even brand-new PCs and monitors unless they pair DVI or HDMI with the HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) technology that Hollywood invented to prevent copying or downloading music or movies … or moving content you’ve paid for from one playback device to another.

Speaking of bandwidth, the largest LCD monitors, such as Dell’s and Apple’s 2560 x 1600-pixel whoppers, require an extra-powerful card known as a dual-link graphics adapter, with 512MB of display memory if possible. ATI’s FireGL V7350 PCI Express workstation adapter has 1GB of onboard memory and can drive two of the abovementioned monsters or one immense 3840 x 2400 display.

Don’t confuse dual-link graphics adapters with dual-head adapters that can drive two monitors simultaneously. The latter can also be accomplished by installing a second or third graphics adapter, or even by plugging in a device from Tritton Technologies called the See2 USB 2.0 adapter. This gadget performs the remarkable feat of turning a Windows PC’s USB port into an additional VGA port, although its resolution and speed limitations restrict the second display to the convenience of holding your e-mail or web browser while your design work fills your primary screen.