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General discussion

My HP Pavilion dv1067ea's screen

Jan 7, 2005 10:33PM PST

I have a question about my HP Pavilion dv1067ea; maybe someone can assure me that all is Ok... The dv1067ea has a WXGA 14'' display (widescreen) 1280x768.
While the display is extremely sharp and clear (with bright colors) when I watch it perfectly perpendicularly, if I only slightly change the vertical view angle the image rapidly becomes unsharp (lighter and lighter as angles grow). I used some notebooks in the past, and I know that LCD displays suffer from these drawbacks; but it seems to me that this effect is much more marked in my dv1067ea than in other portable PCs...
I think (but I would be very grateful to anyone who could confirm such thesis) the effect is due to the fact that the screen is only 18 cm (about 7'') high; so, compared to other screens with a 768 vertical resolution, its pixels are shorter, and the "view-angle" effect is more evident. I have found several reviews of the HP Pavilion dv1067ea, and all judge it a great notebook... none of them mention any problem about the screen; so, does the problem really exist, or is it implicit in the dv1067ea's WXGA small screen?

Thank you very much in advance!!
Marcello

Discussion is locked

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Do your home work before buying
Jan 8, 2005 1:51PM PST

As I understand your PC belongs to dv1000 series.
According to Reviews in PC World and other respectable magazines this series is perfect except:
1. Not sturdy enough (press top of pc and you will see your finger prints on screen)
2. Noticable glare for BrightView screen.
3. Unusually narrow vertical angle of viewing- !!!
On 1/9/2005 I was in Best Buy and Circuit City - both have dv1040 (brother of yours) and I checked it - 1,2,3 are ALL TRUE.

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Ok...
Jan 8, 2005 10:10PM PST

Ok... unfortunately before buying the Pavilion dv1067ea I found only extremely good reviews of it (maybe, they were biased...). Perhaps, a BrightView display would limit the problem, but this option seems to be available only for the US market. My question is: is it impossible for a 7'' high (768 vert. res.) display to have a better vertical angle view behavior? Are there notebooks with screens of the same size that don't show the problem? If so, I wonder why HP equipped one of its most advertized portable PCs with such a poor display! After all, for an "entertainment" notebook like the dv1000, image quality should be one of the most important features... (and I thought that HP was at the top of the quality...)

Thanks
M.

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15.4" LCD Pentium M notebooks have better LCD viewing angle
Jan 9, 2005 5:43AM PST

You can compare the Gateway 14" widescreen LCD's to the HPDV1000 at Best buy as they are essentially very similar notebooks.

The 15.4" widescreen LCD's do not have such a narrow viewing angle (I have a Compaq X1000/HPZT3000) and they also have dedicated video memory but they are 6.5 pounds and many of you want to go under 5.5 pounds and find out the drawbacks of that (LCD not to same standard, case construction not as solid, shared video memory, etc) later. But that is the price you pay to drop into the sub 5.5 notebook size .......

For those who are directly in front of the LCD, however, the HPDV1000 is fine --if you want to have 4 people grouped around the notebook for presentations get the 15.4" HPZT3000/Compaq X1000, Dell 8600 or Toshiba M30/M35 series (all in 6.2 - 6.9 pound range)