Amiga and BENQ BL912 / BL702A Monitors

[jdryyz]

Can you still make overscan adjustments for that screenmode?

How does Dbl PAL Hi Res and Dbl PAL Hi Res NO FLICKER look?

[dodke]

Not sure if those questions were for me but anyway in euro72 you can't make it much bigger using overscan settings. Pretty sure I had the maximum size in the picture.
Dbl PAL/NTSC modes work but have semi major artefacts you can't get rid of as mentioned before. I've got the VGA productivity mode enabled too so I can use it for apps that absolutely require at least 480px tall screen but it also shows some vertical lines.

Originally Posted by jdryyz

Can you still make overscan adjustments for that screenmode?
How does Dbl PAL Hi Res and Dbl PAL Hi Res NO FLICKER look?

[jbilander]

Originally Posted by jdryyz

Can you still make overscan adjustments for that screenmode?

How does Dbl PAL Hi Res and Dbl PAL Hi Res NO FLICKER look?

Here is how ClassicWB ADVSP looks with DblPAL Hi Res NO FLICKER mode using a simple rgb->vga adapter with A1200 to Benq BL912. Some overscan settings made...

[Nibbler]

I got a Benq BL702A today.

First i was shocked by the vertical lines and scaling artefacts but i use the Pixel Clock and the Phase to get rid of it. I used Dpaint with a grey background to do this and now its really nice. No more lines.

The only thing that really annoys me is the Auto Adjust
If i change the resolution or maybe some Whdload gameswitch from pal to NTSC all the settings get lost

Is there a way to deactivate the dawm auto adjust ? .. so annoying

[Nibbler]

BTW my settings for PAL Amiga 600 Rev 1.5

Thats for the Standard Amiga Resolution (Pal High Res - Normal games wont switch)

Pixel Clock = 94
Phase=20

This took a while in Brilliance/Dpaint with Grey backgrounds to adjust. Now the picture is great but the AUTO ADJUST is REALLY ANNOYING If i play a NTSC game for exampe or using different resolutions in Brilliance/Dpaint the monitor auto adjust . Thats my only BIG negative about this monitor .The Monitor wont save settings and Auto adjust

[Nibbler]

I noticed some strange colours here and there in some small spot.
Phase is also very important to get right otherwise some color shading is off !

Just look at the example pictures. (The Sunstone in Indy - Atlantis showed the "wrong color tone" the best)

1) is too much phase
2) is how it should be

Also the colors need to be adjusted and i took a Sony trinitron as a reference.

Color is : (i dont know if thats different for NTSC and its also a matter of taste but 100 is to strong imho)

Red=87
Green=80
Blue=84

Sharpness=1
Gamma,Brightness & Contrast somewhere in the middle, its a matter of taste and finetuning. (this can take a while....)
Pixelclock = 94 (any other value produces vertical scaling artefacts)
Phase = 20

With those settings the Benq BL702A is pretty good BUT he cant beat a good old CRT, because of little Display Smearing.

(good to see in games like giana sisters or turrican 1 1 level, or any game with a 1 coloured background)

Still, the Benq is pretty nice. Keep in mind to only use PAL or NTSC, otherwise the dawm thing autoadjust and the PixelClock/Phase settings get´s deleted !

Greetings, Nibbler


PS: I have to mention that this is for PAL and Pixelclock and Phase is different for NTSC !

[MartinW]

I'm tempted to try one of these. I have a GBA1000 which has flicker fixer and Picasso card but the Flicker fixer circuit is not very clean and always produces banding that I have never been able to adjust out on LCDs. The flicker fixer can be disabled so it produces but 15Khz and 30Khz modes through the same cable.

Questions for anyone that has these:

1. I constantly see a banner coming up in everyones videos when changing mode saying the optimal resolution in 1280x1024. Since we know that, is there any way to disable that warning. That would get pretty annoying pretty quickly when going from Picasso WB to 15Khz games.

2. Is there any gizmo you can get to sit between the Amiga and it that will produce scan lines in 15Khz modes. I seem to have got rather used to them.

I have CRTs at the moment but there is something not ideal with all of them. They all make a horrible noise from the HT, the VGA one has low contrast so the colours look washed out and the Microvitec Multisync, is the opposite (pretty dark) and whilst it tries it's best is still quite flickery.

I'm been battling monitors since getting into this back in 2011. Seems you just can't win !

[MartinW]

[EDIT] PS I also have an A1200 so if the BQ was perfect I'd probably get two

Oops - that was meant to be an edit to the previous post

[MartinW]

So, I went ahead and bought one. It's going back because it has a bright purple stuck pixel right in the lower centre of the screen! If it were off to the top left or something like that then maybe I'd put up with it.

I did some testing last night. It is probably the best LCD screen I have ever used with an Amiga.

To address my own points, the constant nagging that the preferred screen resolution is 1280x1024 is terrible and cannot be switched off. I really wish they had provided an option to disable that.

On the plus side the screen remembers it's geometry settings for each mode but like most monitors, only up to a certain number of modes. I didn't count how many but if you play around with different screen modes soon enough you'll find it's forgotten some earlier mode you had set. This only applies to geometry. Brightness, contrast, sharpness etc. are common across all modes. They may be per "preset", I didn't think to check that.

For some reason stuff like aspect ratio is permanently greyed out for me but it doesn't need adjusting anyway.

Side-by-side comparison, it still cannot beat the M1438 that is sat next to it but it has less flicker, takes up far less space and let's face it, that M1438 won't last forever.

I need to decide if it is better enough that my 17" CRT VGA monitor to get a replacement when this one is returned. I probably will. But probably just the one, I probably won't replace the M1438.

The icing on the cake would be if I could inject scan lines into the 15Khz modes of my GB-A1000. I have an idea for that but it will probably never happen

[arcanist]

Originally Posted by MartinW

To address my own points, the constant nagging that the preferred screen resolution is 1280x1024 is terrible and cannot be switched off. I really wish they had provided an option to disable that.

From Amibay:

But that aside, since I do have the Benq BL702A I ordered here, hoping others didn't already mention this (this thread is way too long for humans): you can enter the monitor's service menu by keeping Menu pressed while powering it on, then pressing Menu again. It is a very barebones service menu, but it does have two toggles that should be useful for Amigas: you can disable the power-on Benq logo, which is just not useful, and you can disable the pop-up thing that tells you which recommended resolution you should use with the monitor (since 1280x1024 is not a resolution you can use with the Amiga chipset, anyway).

[MartinW]

THANK YOU. That's awesome. I can't confirm this myself now since I've just packed the monitor up for return but i think you just swung my decision towards getting this one replaced rather than refunded!

i received this last week , and after playing around with it for a while, ive decided to send it back and stick with the CRT , workbench looks great on it ,cant complain.
But games look much much worse on it and nothing i change makes a bit of difference when it comes to games.
Cannon Fodder looks like im playing the Lego version of it lol.

Pretty disappointed to be honest,i thought it would have been better espec for games than it actually is, the only reason i wanted to try it was for space saving over the CRT but when things look as bad as they do ,i just cant keep it ,knowing it would look a whole lot better on my old CRT.

[Cobe]

Originally Posted by xubidoo

Cannon Fodder looks like im playing the Lego version of it lol.

I had the same feeling back in the days when I saw Cannon Fodder on friend's 386.

[ProdigalAmigan]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

it's a little annoying how the image stretches differently in different screen modes ... The monitor only remembers one setting though, so AFAIK there's no way to get a filled screen in every screen mode without manual adjustments every time...

I do not doubt you but I just have to mention that I have the BL702A monitor as well and I run Workbench in 640x480 with Multisync Productivity monitor profile (under Workbench 3.9), and also of course for games/normal PAL resolution @ 15Khz ...

Now the thing is my monitor DO remember these two screenmode settings independently. I wonder if this is something they fixed in later revisions of the monitor (firmware)?

//ProdigalAmigan

[MartinW]

BL702 here also and yes, mine remembers multiple setting profiles. It doesn't have infinite internal memory and I've not counted how many profiles it can save before rolling over but sure, eventually it will overwrite a previous setting. This is particularly visible when you first get it and you are instinctively testing lots of different resolutions to see what they look like!

Mine certainly remembers more than one though. Maybe 5 or 6?

[dodke]

How do you disable the benq logo and / or the optimal resolution warning? I can't find anything like that in the menus.

[BLUELiGHT]

Keep the menu button pressed while powering the monitor on, then press menu again and you should be into the service menu

[dodke]

Originally Posted by BLUELiGHT

Keep the menu button pressed while powering the monitor on, then press menu again and you should be into the service menu

Amazing, thank you! so much better now.

[jbilander]

Does anyone know if this type of Scanline generator would work (generate scanlines) on a 15 kHz Amiga RGB signal to Benq BL912 / BL702A Monitors or does it only work for 31 kHz?

I think it is powered +5V from Vga pin 9 so Amiga RGB-> Vga adapter would need to have 5V wired from Amiga pin23 but would it work for 15 kHz signals?

[Jope]

You can't blank every second line where there is none. :-) So no, it won't be very useful on a 15kHz signal that hasn't been doubled to 31 first.