This monitor was designed to be used with Apple's latest G4 Macintosh product line- A single proprietary cable (called the Apple Display Connector, or ADC) provides power and video information to the monitor as well as USB connectivity to the two port USB hub built into the back of the screen.The 1.5" surrounding bezel is grey, encased in clear plastic, giving it a crystal look matching the G4 Cube or Tower decor.By utilizing Apple's ADC to DVI Converter (not included- provides backward compatibility with non-ADC Macs such as Apple's Powerbook notebooks) as well as a graphic card with a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) port, such as NVidia's GeForce4 4600 or ATI's 9700 Pro, the Cinema Display can be used by both older Macs and PCs.The converter combines AC power, DVI video data and USB data into one port for the monitor's ADC input cable.
The LCD display is roughly one inch taller and two inches wider than two sheets of paper (8.5 x 11) placed side by side- perfect for displaying two full page word processing documents, web page design, or any other applications which might require a number of simultaneous open windows.
There are three minor issues that I noticed.Most monitors have some kind of adjustment buttons... contrast, brightness, hue, tint, etc.Rather than provide external adjustment buttons, The Apple Cinema Display comes with their Apple Displays Software- Apple's "all digital", Mac-only display adjustment solution.PC users must make adjustments to the display via their videocard's driver software.The two touch sensitive buttons on the front bezel are specifically to turn on a G4 Mac and to access the Apple Displays Software... when attached to a PC with the converter, they serve no purpose (although they glow when touched).
Another caveat... Apple doesn't provide an *.INF file for Windows Plug and Play recognition.Windows XP just lists it as a "Plug and Play Monitor".It's an insignificant detail, but when there are few flaws to speak of, the insignificant ones tend to stand out.
Most flat panel displays are suspended from central hinge and mounted on a stand.The size and weight of the 23" Cinema Display make it difficult to implement this, so it stands on three feet- two 2" legs at the base of the screen and a central leg mounted in the back, similar to how a picture frame stands up.This makes the monitor tilt up at an angle, rather than flat in relation to the viewer.I corrected this by putting a video cassette under the back leg.
My Test System: Athlon 2800+, Asus A7N8X+ motherboard, 1Gb PC3200 DDR RAM, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
First, I decided to watch a DVD.I had mixed results, but not due to the display.
Wide-format DVDs can be encoded two ways- either in full widescreen leaving the DVD software/player to create the black bars above and below the image when displayed on a standard monitor or television, or it can be encoded with the black bars as part of the video frames.This produces a normal widescreen look on a 4:3 ratio television or monitor, but a widescreen display will display black borders on the sides.As a result, the first TRON DVD release (not the 20th Anniversary Edition) and the theatrical release of DUNE (not the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series) that I watched had a two inch black border surrounding a widescreen video image.
Both Intervideo's WinDVD and Cyberlink's PowerDVD software exhibited the same problem, although PowerDVD does have a software zoom solution that cuts a little bit off of the left and right sides.
Independence Day and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace were a different story though.The Cinema Display has a 16:10 ratio, while standard widescreen format is a 16:9 ratio.Because of this, playback of true widescreen movies on this monitor will still have black bars above and below the video image.
According to the Apple Website,The Cinema Display has "lightning-fast pixel response for full-motion digital video playback."They weren't overstating their claim either... I could not detect any of the "ghosting" that occurs with some LCD monitors when high action/fast movement video sequences are displayed.
Next I tried gaming.The two games I have installed are Funcom's Anarchy Online and Dreamcatcher's Hegemonia: Legions of Doom.
Hegemonia is a 3D space battle strategy game.It had only a few resolutions available in it's graphics options screen- the highest being 1600 x 1200.When I played this game, like the 4:3 ratio DVDs, there were black bars on each side of the screen.This is understandable though- few games are written to take advantage of non-standard screen resolutions.Other than that the image was sharp and clear with no distortions.
Anarchy Online is a "massively multi-player online role-playing game", or MMORPG.It was written to be able to utilize any display resolution, either in fullscreen mode or in a window, and I was able to play the game easily at 1920 x 1200.Every so often, though, I'd see the screen "twitch" as I played the game... It could've been any number of things, from the software itself, to Microsoft's DirectX API, to a build up of static.When I actually started playing the game, (after about 15 minutes of "ooohing" and "ahhhing" over the image) the twitches were hardly noticable... in fact, I've noticed them occurring less and less, which leads me to believe that it was indeed a minor static issue.
Summary:The 23" Apple Cinema Display is, simply put, one of the absolute best displays on the market.... more.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Apple Cinema HD Display - LCD display - TFT - 23" - 1920 x 1200 - 200 cd/m2 - 350:1 - 0.258 mm - white
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