Home Theaters

Many people would be building their own Home Theater PC, if it was not for the fact that hooking a personal computer to a sufficiently large monitor was always a bad compromise.

In order to have a large picture for movie and video viewing, a large monitor was needed, but what was not as apparent as the nose on your face is that fact that these large displays were operating at reduced resolutions, and produced poor picture quality when using the monitor to show data, even using a graphical operating system. Text was always larger than most would desire to keep from having the tattered look or fuzziness that increased resolution would bring.

There is also the problem with the running of things not at the native resolution of an LCD display. If a 30″ display has a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, what happens when you want to run a game at a lower resolution, for speed or simply to make it easier to use from a distance? This is where an onboard processor is employed, to help the system get things looking right, and not overburden the graphics card.

Now the Gateway XHD3000 monitor has a native resolution of 2560 x 1600, and unlike others released recently, has that onboard processor fast enough to do the scaling, de-interlacing, noise reduction, and other needed features.

This Gateway model uses a chipset from Silicon Optix, called the Realta. This is normally only found in higher priced hardware used in consumer-grade choices. This chipset is not found in similar sized products from Dell and Hewlitt-Packard.

30 inches of screen goodness, with the ability to do many things well -  expensive, but worth it. Full review.

The important specs are:

Viewable size    30-inch diagonal
Panel type    LCD active matrix TFT

High-Def support    1600p, 1080i, 1080p, 720p, 480i and 480p
Resolution    2560×1600 (native and maximum)
Brightness    400cd/m2
Contrast ratio    1000:1
Response time    6ms (gray to gray)
Colors    16.7 million
Viewing angles    178/178
Pixel pitch    0.250mm
Screen treatment    Anti-glare

Connections    Single and Dual-link DVI
HDMI
Component
S-Video
Composite
Analog (VGA)
USB 2.0 (6 ports)
Audio inputs for all video inputs (HDMI audio, RCAx4, S/PDIFx2)

Power supply    External
Stand Positioning    Stand provides swivel, tilt
Wall mount    Vesa 100MM

Audio    Full-length speaker bar standard

Lamp life    50,000 hours
Approvals    UL, cUL, FCC Class B, NOM, CE, VCCI and PSE
Weight    Monitor: 20.8 lbs. (9.4 kg)
Speaker Bar: 3 lbs. (1.3 kg)
Stand: 6.4 lbs. (2.9 kg)
Dimensions    22.24 × 17.02~22.15 × 15.37 inches
(564.8 × 432.3~562.7 × 390.3 mm)

Warranty    One year, parts and labor

All pretty good, except for that warranty - one year warranty on a big, expensive monitor doesn’t do much to engender the customer’s trust.

The monitor does provide a wealth of connection options -

and a nice screen menu system. The monitor supports Picture-in-Picture, so those inputs can allow the ball game to be windowed while composing that last minute message to the people you are begging off from dinner with.

The unit comes with its own remote, which allows a very easy switch from work settings, to video screenings, to game play.

The unit is not the best at everything, choosing instead to be well above average at most all things. Another complaint beyond the warranty could be the huge power brick that the unit comes with, which has been compared to the monster brick that is supplied with the Xbox 360, both in size and heat production. Build quality could be a little higher, but at $1700 (compare to separate work and play monitors)for such a large display, it’s not bad.

I won’t be buying one anytime soon, but many will, and that will help the rest of us, as the cost will come down as the usage goes up!

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