UPDATE: Gateway 24" LCD Display

UPDATE: I fixed the link for this article. It now properly goes to the review of the monitor at extremetech.com.

I've got my eyes on one of these, the Gateway FPD2485W. I recently got a refurbished Dell 2405 WFP (unfortunately for another edit room, not my own) It looks good and all of the real estate is great. But these aren't just computer monitors. The Gateway and Dell 24" displays can display video, including high-def video, and I like the idea of getting a computer monitor that can double as a high-definition video monitor.

I tried using the component inputs to display some HD from an HDV deck with my Dell 2405WFP, and I was disappointed. Seemed like the processing (de-interlacing, scaling) was poor quality. I was definitely seeing more detail than on an SD display but the image quality of HD video was subpar. These 24" screens have 1920x1200 resolution--very close to 1920x1080. Instead of displaying pixel for pixel, the 2405 WFP seemed to be scaling up the video to totally fill the screen. IMO, that definitely wasn't helping the video. I tried using Final Cut Pro's Digital Desktop playback on the monitor and ran into problems there too. This does display high-def video pixel-for-pixel, but the problem is that HDV isn't true 1920x1080. Instead the actual resolution is 1440x1080, which is stretched out to 1920x1080. Well, FCP also doesn't do a good job of scaling the video in Digital Desktop mode. Once again, I wasn't happy with the high-def video display.

Well, a couple of days after getting the Dell 2405WFP, I ran into the Gateway 24" monitor at CompUSA. First, I was bowled over by how bright the display was. Maybe not the greatest for a computer display, but a plus for video. Then, I noticed that the Gateway monitor had Faroudja electronics for processing video--that's a good sign because Faroudja is known for their chips in things like upscaling DVD players. All this, and the Gateway is only a few more bucks than my refurbished Dell 2405 WFP was.

This review of the Gateway 24" LCD compares its performance to the new Dell 2407 WFP. It says they are both good performers, but says that the Dell does better out of the box at giving accurate colors. The Gateway needs more tweaking of its settings. My experience in the store suggested that the colors were way-over saturated on the Gateway. I'm never done much calibration of my computer display, and the review even suggested tweaking your software settings as well the monitor's on-screen display settings.

UPDATE
HP is also getting competitive with Dell with their LP2465 24" LCD display. No analog video inputs, but instead has 2 DVI ports (I wonder what it would do with an HDMI signal with a HDMI>DVI adapter cable?). Macworld has a brief review of the HP LP2456. Nice to see more competitiion with Dell in the low-cost (relatively) 24" LCD market.