The Quality of an Apple Audiovision Display 14

[Dimitris1980]

What about the quality of the subject monitor? I have read that it has great picture and sound quality but i cannot find any photos in the internet to make an opinion. I know it has fixed resolution but personally i don't care because most of the games of the 90s that i play with my performa 6116 are made for 640x480 resolution (Monkey Island, Gabriel Knight etc.) Anything more demanding is suitable for my Imac G3

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Mine is extremely sharp, bright, good contrast and color. The speakers have good tonal range for monitor-integrated speakers, with a moderate amount of bass (but definitely nowhere near even a good set of external speakers, much less an x.1 speaker system with a dedicated bass.)

 

[Cory5412]

The speakers in the AudioVision display far outclass any audio output any 68k Mac will ever make, with the exception of, say, using your Mac as a CD player. As the display goes, both of mine were incredibly sharp and bright, because they're trinitrons.

The only problem I ever had with mine was one of them had a problem with power fairly well into its life. (This was 2005 or 2006) -- Somebody more adventurous than I am could probably have opened it up and re-soldered the power connectors.

If you're just looking to play games, I would also look at some of the other 14-inch displays available, such as the Apple Color Display, M1212, which uses the same tube but does not require an adapter. (Or getting a VGA adapter and using whatever 14-17-inch CRT you happen to see locally first.) I don't know if the M1212 has the same issue with its power connector that the AudioVision does.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

The AudioVision 14 is my favorite monitor made by Apple, I do not believe that any other Apple monitor compares in terms of quality and features. Note that it is the only monitor that plugs directly into the funky video port on your 6116. To use this monitor with non x1xx Macs, you must use a special breakout adapter.

 

[Scott Baret]

Any of Apple's external Trinitron displays are of good quality. Although I don't have an AV14", I have nothing but positive to say about the Macintosh Color Display and 13" Hi-Res RGB. The only Trinitrons I've had issues with are those in the Color Classics, which seem to be prone to geometry problems over time.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

Some AudioVisions have been known to rotate their image over time and there is no adjustment for rotate except to loosen and rotate the yoke. There is also some bugginess with the front panel buttons after a reboot. Turning up the brightness sometimes makes it drop to min brightness first, then proceed to brighten up from black if you keep holding it down. But other than those minor flaws, it is totally awesome. It communicates the volume / mute / mic button presses via ADB, that's sorta cool. You get visual feedback of button presses, similar to what happens in OS X when you press the volume/brightness/mute keys.

 

[Dimitris1980]

It seems a great monitor but is very hard to find one

 

[Dimitris1980]

The Apple Audiovision Display is very hard to find. I found and bought a Macintosh Color Display. The 90s games with the 256 colours look great with this monitor.

 

[onlyonemac]

Any of Apple's external Trinitron displays are of good quality. Although I don't have an AV14", I have nothing but positive to say about the Macintosh Color Display and 13" Hi-Res RGB. The only Trinitrons I've had issues with are those in the Color Classics, which seem to be prone to geometry problems over time.

My Macintosh Color Display has terrible geometry problems. It has trapeziod, pincusion, size, and positions issues, and there're no adjusters for either the trapeziod or pincusion!

 

[uniserver]

http://www.microcenter.com/product/410070/15_LCD_Monitor_Refurbished#

This might be a good solution, I find the square LCD's are better then Wide Screen, for vintage computing purposes.

 

[onlyonemac]

Any LCD spoils vintage Macintosh output. They just don't do justice to the vintage screen designs-everything's to crisp and neat. You need the "smudge" produced by a CRT.

 

[CC_333]

I've seen some good CRTs produce relatively sharp output. I'm sure the top of the line models in their time produced output that would rival all but the best LCDs (even to this day).

For things like fine graphics design or word processing, I imagine the sharper the image is, the easier it is to work. To that end, I'm sure if LCDs then were as they are now, they wouldn't have bothered with CRTs at all, and even the lowly Mac 128k probably would've been based around an LCD instead. This is all speculation, of course.

Given how things progressed in reality, of course, I kind of agree; it just doesn't look right somehow to have an LCD attached to an old Mac which was designed with CRTs in mind.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand...

c

 

[markyb86]

I think the main reason LCD's don't look right connected to older computers is that most LCD's don't have the correct resolution. Most don't even have 2:1 of the correct resolution.

The LCD I have connected to the G3 does 832x624 native and looks pretty good.

 

[CelGen]

Any monitor that used a Trinitron tube from Sony is known for being the best out there.

 

[Bunsen]

Any LCD spoils vintage Macintosh output. They just don't do justice to the vintage screen designs-everything's to crisp and neat. You need the "smudge" produced by a CRT.

This basically makes the opposite of sense. There is such a thing as taking retro-ism too far.

Now, you may have had a point if you were talking about games on the Apple II and similar era 8-bit machines, which sometimes used the inherent quirks and flaws of NTSC/PAL TV to create new colours, by "smudging" pixels of different colours next to each other. But in reference to 68k and later Macs and CRT monitors vs LCD monitors, this is either nonsense or a very personal aesthetic preference.

Personally, I like to be able to see.

I think the main reason LCD's don't look right connected to older computers is that most LCD's don't have the correct resolution.

This on the other hand is a real factor - LCDs having a fixed number of pixels, they can't necessarily rescale another resolution cleanly without jaggies and oddness showing up from the mismatch of dot pitch. That's if they even rescale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern