REVIEW: Samsung 245T Part 14

FarCry in 1.920 x 1.200

We can recommend the monitor for occasional gamers: streaking is minimal in games such as Counterstrike: Source, Unreal Tournament 2004, FarCry or Serious Sam 2 and is not disturbing to occasional gamers.

However, "pro-gamers" often demand circling or especially fast, jerky and precise movements, so that the poorly-adjusted overdrive meets its limits. Here, a hardcore gamer who looks closely my worry about his or her accuracy.

The left picture shows the comparison between the Samsung 245T (left) and a CRT- monitor (right): the average 2,5 fps lag is acceptable and cannot be perceived by the human eye. Only if additional lags are added by mouse or PC can a tangible lag arise.

There is also an average input lag of 39 ms or 2,5 frames. For occasional gamers, this is not of any importance, but hardcore gamers who value lightning-fast response in an LCD monitor should not take a Samsung 245T as their first choice.

Motion Picture Accelerator-Technologie (MPA)

The Samsung SyncMaster 245T is the first ever consumer monitor and as such has an impulse-driven backlight. Motion Picture Accelerator technology (MPA) compensates for the perceptive weaknesses of the human eye and eliminates the motion blur caused by LCDs.

The sluggishness of our eyes is to blame for this; they "save" a bright image for a few milliseconds before it fades. Because the pixel glow constantly in LCDs when an object moves across the screen (unlike CRTs), a blurring arises in the eye because the old image has not faded.

MPA technology is based on an impulse-driven backlight. If MPA is activated, the backlight is switched on and off at the rate of the vertical frequency of 60Hz, or sixty times a second, like a stopwatch. As with a tube monitor, where the pixels are only ever illuminated for a short time, MPA ensures that the old image can fade in the eye before the new one is displayed: motion blur is minimised or is not visible at all.

MPA can be activated as quickly as it is deactivated – the touch of a button is enough.

The SyncMaster 245T has its own button on the front for switching MPA on or off. This proves to be a good advantage in practice, since for normal desktop use, MPA is simply annoying. Like an old 60 Hz television, the screen flickers and causes headaches.

However, the MPA function is really intended for moving image content – so what effect does it have on films? Here, the flickering is much less clear. Only with static, one-coloured surfaces can it be noticed once more. When an ego-shooting game is played, such as Unreal Tournament, for example, no more flickering can be seen.

However, the "Aha!" factor is lacking. Subjectively, we could see no difference in the blind test when we played games on the monitor and could therefore not tell if MPA was activated or not. However, an improvement is certainly visible in synthetic tests: a Vulcan landscape that is constantly moving across the screen looks sharper with MPA. In addition, streaking in the PixPerAn test is reduced because the motion blur, which would otherwise act as an additional factor, is eliminated.

Ultimately, MPA is a nice additional feature whose effect is strongly dependent on subjective perception and which can be switched off (thank God!) to avoid the awful flickering that arises with desktop use. Possibly, the positive effect would be much more visible with a fast-responding TN panel.

MPA fulfils its purpose for industry: it was originally designed to display X-Ray images sharply during baggage scans at airports. And for pictures that move constantly across the screen, the effect of MPA is at its most visible.

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