Supersized

Apple wants to take over your workspace. The 30in. Cinema Display, introduced at the end of 2004, is the “even-cooler” follow-up to its extremely popular 23in. monitor that rocked the display world a few years ago. The 30in. Cinema Display is a stunning product that will have you rethinking how you set up windows and palettes in all your graphics programs.

Apple reinforces the myth about size with its 30in. Cinema Display. If you can afford the desk space, it''s worth the $2,999 price tag.

The 30in. Cinema Display is another elegantly designed product from Apple, trading its clear Lucite look for the aluminum aesthetic of the G5s. The frame for the monitor has been scaled down to a narrow — approx. 1in. — anodized aluminum bezel that surrounds the LCD panel. The thin border was designed so that two 30in. displays could be placed side by side to convey the illusion of a continuous 60in. workspace. The unit is surprisingly light — 27lbs. — and while there are more cables than on past Apple monitors, the display looks simple and uncluttered when it sits on your desk, tall and proud, against the sky.

As with other Apple flatscreens, there are pairs of FireWire and USB 2.0 connectors on the back of the monitor. This is a great feature that I use all the time for hardware keys, connecting the Wacom tablet or my SD card reader. A nice touch.

Apple has added a power, on/off, and sleep switches and a brightness control to the side of the display, but all other instrumentation is found in System Preferences. This has bothered other reviewers more than me, but I agree it would be a plus if you could have all the color and gamma controls on the side of the display.

Ergonomically, the distance from screen to chair, basically the depth of your desk, may not be deep enough for comfortable viewing. I found myself leaning back to take in the whole screen when watching a DVD. The second thing you notice is the 100ppi resolution. The screen is noticeably sharper compared to a 72ppi screen, which is what you'll find in most other displays. Because of the higher resolution, the Apple 30in. displays small type and thin lines better than my older Dell LCD or a relatively new Apple 17in. LCD. And when working in After Effects and creating masks, the added resolution makes edge decisions that much more accurate. But the main reason the higher resolution is great is because images look snappier.

Apple''s sexy new aluminum-housed LCD Cinema Displays (from left to right) 30in. with a 2560x 1600 resolution, 23in. with a 1920x1200 resolution, and 20in. with a 1680x1050 resolution.

Today's LCDs cover a contrast range of approximately 350:1 to 700:1. This is a measurement of pixels at 100 percent white compared with the same pixels at 0 percent, or black. The Apple display is rated at 400:1, so it may appear below average. However, as with most specs taken out of context, contrast ratio is not that simple. The typical way manufacturers increase contrast is by increasing overall brightness. This makes the whites lighter compared with the black, which remains at the same level, so the contrast ratio is higher. However, black has not been improved relative to room brightness. In fact, a high-contrast 700:1 display may look no better than a 500:1 display.

The Apple 30in. features slightly above-average brightness for an LCD at 270 nits, particularly when compared to the average CRT brightness, which falls in the range of 80 to 100 nits. The range of brightness for competing LCDs is 200 to 450 nits. Absolute brightness is important, but remember that our eyes adapt to brightness. In a relatively dark environment most LCD screens will look very bright. The brightness of a monitor is a much bigger factor when viewed in a room with high ambient light levels. However, any serious graphic artist will want to work in a low-light environment. Also, while brightness far above the 400-nit range is good for watching movies, it may be overkill for graphics work.

At 16ms, the response time of the 30in. is very fast; 12ms is considered super fast. Fast response time is important for reducing smearing or lag when high-contrast fast motion is viewed. LCD response refers to the time it takes a pixel to go from a black state to white and back to black or off/on/off. The pixel-rise time is usually higher than the pixel-fall time. The sum of the two is the response time in milliseconds. To test for smearing, I ran various high-action tests including DVDs, the graphics-intensive video game Half Life II, and my own test using a QuickTime movie of a white block flying over a black background. I tried this on three different LCD displays including a Dell 17in. and a 17in. Apple monitor. The Dell had significantly more smearing than both the Apple 17in. and the new 30in. The difference between the Apple 17in. and the 30in. was difficult to detect — both monitors have negligible smearing and only on the fastest action. The specs are a useful starting point, but trusting your eyes is just as important.

According to Apple's specs, the 30in. Cinema Display's viewing angle is 170 degrees in the horizontal axis, which is more or less typical for high-quality LCD displays. When a completely neutral background is viewed and the head moved side-to-side there is a slight change in brightness, but I place the monitor so my eyes are level with the center of the screen, so it's doubtful the slight change in brightness would be a factor when working.

Setup was easy. As with other Apple products, the packaging, instructions, and simplicity of the product make it easy to get the monitor up and running in a few minutes. Changing the graphics card was the only real work. Despite the best-looking case on the market (Mac G5), it was awkward reaching the screws used to hold the card in place. Other than that, it was a routine seven-minute operation.

With previous Apple displays, a proprietary ADVI connector was used. ADVI had the advantage of providing power to the monitor so only one cable was necessary, but it required an adapter if you wanted to use an Apple LCD display with a PC. With the 30in. Cinema Display, an industry-standard DVI connector has replaced the ADVI connector. Consequently, you have to plug the monitor into a power outlet. You also gain two cables for the FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 hubs built into the back of the display. The simplicity of the single cable was great, but Apple is looking to make the display compatible with Windows machines without an adapter.

After using the 30 in. screen it's very difficult to work on a smaller monitor for anything but word processing. CPUs are important, but the GUI is where the interaction between user and machine takes place. It's what defines the experience of using a computer. The Apple 30in. is the biggest improvement to that basic experience since OS X appeared a few years ago.

For digital content creation, most of my workstations have dual monitors. Even the 23in. Apple display I'm using as I type this article has a 17in. CRT alongside it. This is where I place the palettes and other programs when I'm working in Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, or After Effects. Even so, the desktop quickly gets cluttered. Even at the price of a trip to the Virgin Islands, by finally solving the space problem, the 30in. could be called a bargain.

The Apple 30in. display is already a big investment, so be aware that you may have more to spend on a graphics card. Apple recommends the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL card, which takes two slots. The upside is that the $599 GeForce 6800 supports dual 30in. monitors. The total price for the card and monitor is $3599.

Sticker shock? ATI can save you $100 with its new Radeon X800 XT Mac edition graphics board. Apart from being an extremely fast graphic card for 2D and 3D performance, the X800 supports one Apple 30in. display and a second legacy display. There's more: The most recent graphic board developer to get into the act is Matrox Graphics with the introduction of the Parhelia 256MB PCI card (it's compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit PCI and PCI-X slots). There's also an S-Video and composite output cable that enables playback to an NTSC or PAL video monitor. The list price of the Parhelia is $699. The three cards provide different configuration options so you have a few choices depending on the type of work you do.

To comment on this article, email the Video Systems editorial staff at vsfeedback@primediabusiness.com.