SUMMARY: Widescreen is a new way of viewing life, at least your computer life. Widescreen or 16:9 started to become popular as Plasma displays entered the market. Today Shawn "Toxic" Baker, the man addicted to 16:9, takes a look at Samsung's 172W LCD monitor. Interested in viewing life at 16:9? If so, read on and discover the benefits of the new dimensions.
The Samsung website is quite limited as far as specifications go on the LCD. As stated above, the monitor is of Wide Format or 16:9 as most people may know it as. 16:9 has been around for a long time but only over the past two years has it become available at a reasonable price to the average consumer. The introduction of plasma screens a few years back brought with it wide screen viewing and since then we have been blessed with 16:9 on multiple type of displays.
Plasma screens are still quite new to the market and are far from perfected, over time they will get better but as far as size to dollar ratio goes plasma screens are terrible. Also because it runs on a gas, in the event where it has to be refilled, it can become very expensive.
When it came time to bring the people 16:9 in a more affordable format, Rear Projection and normal CRT was the answer. Due to this new format being quite different, new technology had to be implemented into the latest CRT, Rear Projection TVs as well as the latest LCDs. For this reason Rear Projection, CRT and LCDs now look better then ever giving plasmas an excellent run for their money as greater value can be found in these devices.
