There’s no VGA connector. How do you hook this thing up?
Posted by Jon Peddie on July 30th 2007 | Discuss
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LG just brought out a 20-inch LCD monitor they’re calling the FlatronWide L206WU. The unique thing about this monitor is that it uses DisplayLink’s DL-160 chip, enabling high-res graphics over a USB 2.0 link. The display offers wide-screen resolution (1680x1050) on a 20.1-inch (51.13 cm) active matrix TFT LCD panel with a non-glare screen.
With 2ms response time and 3000:1 contrast ratio, the monitor is well suited for playing fast FPS games, and with the high contrast ratio it’s well suited for PCTV, as well as photo and video editing and professional graphics (i.e., DCC and CAD.).
The 20-inch L206WU has 300 cd/m2 brightness, 170 degrees viewing angle, and HDCP support. It’s also rotatable 90-degrees, but the Portrait display software that comes with it only works with the VGA or DVI connection, not the USB connection, which is too bad.
The USB is hubbed allowing additional monitors to be daisy-chained, and, depending on the quality of the base USB controller in your PC, up to six external monitors can theoretically be daisy-chained with high-res, 32-bit true-color graphics with real-time video playback.
Price and availability dates are yet to be announced.
If three are good, should four be better?
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Figure 1. How many is too many? So far, four is just fine |
Some of you may remember I run three monitors, one on either side of my laptop. I’ve had various hookups using various controllers and systems but gotten quite comfortable with the Toshiba docking station. After checking out the LG Flatron Wide, and complaining about the stand not letting it get close enough to the desk, it occurred to me its height might be an advantage, so I extended it all the way up and put it behind my laptop’s display.
The amazing thing about this is that it’s all being done through the USB port. The LG (at the top) has built in USB video port), the Gateway (on the left) is a DVI to the Toshiba docking station which generates the DVI from USB, and the Samsung (on the right) has a VGA-to-USB dongle. All of that USB plumbing is routed through the Toshiba docking station, as is the Ethernet cable and (you can almost see in the photo) the audio for the surround sound Creative speaker system. The result is, only one USB cable has to be unplugged when taking the laptop on a trip.
And. in case the math, in the caption is not obvious, the left, top and center screens are at 1680x1050, while the right screen is at 1600x1200.
What we couldn’t get working in time for this story was the rotation software for the right screen. But imagine if you can use the right screen in portrait mode; now that would be sweet.
Also keep in mind that this is a four screen setup for the cost of the displays.
What do we think?
Well this is a definite thumbs up. The LG Flatron is a no brainer to install and use. It’s got amazing brightness, in fact we had to turn it down to about 50%. The colors are a little odd, a black frame on a white stand, but the back frame is a nice shinny black gloss giving it a contemporary look.
The stand doesn’t allow you to drop the display lower than four inches from the desktop, and so if you’re like us, using a laptop, you’d like the secondary monitor to line up better physically with the display on your laptop but you can use it with the monitor above your display.
We think the monitor will be in the $500 range and could be less if LG really believed in saving money. Why they stuck a VGA connector with all the associated A/D and time circuitry needed, as well as a DVI connector, and then advertised it as a USB monitor is beyond us. It should be USB only, and if is LG is worried about missing some sales, then they should have a separate VGA and/or DVI version. So if you bought it for its simple install, or its ability to be remotely located, or the ability to daisy-chain other monitors from it, you’re paying more than you should for those uneeded connectors and support circuitry (plus the time it take LG to test and certify those unneeded connectors).
