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The Shark Tale HD trailer looked very good

The reason for this is that the nearest resolution the graphics card could output to was 1360 x 768, meaning that the panel has to scale the picture across the missing six vertical lines, causing the poor pixel tracking effect. I tried inputting a custom resolution to exactly match the panel but the nVidia driver refused it.

We also hooked up via D-Sub and found the picture to be noticeably softer with the larger size making the difference between analogue and digital quite marked. We also tried the RGB SCART socket with an X-Box. This was a good test of the response time that Acer quotes as 12 milliseconds from ‘grey to grey’, which is a little misleading. Even so, I had no complaints with no signs of ghosting to spoil my enjoyment. However the low resolution of the X-Box was more noticeable than it would be on a CRT, with a lot of jaggies visible. For console gaming on this screen a high definition signal via component or VGA should yield better results.

Moving to DVD via the DVI connection I tried out some futuristic effects courtesy of the Audi car chase scene from ‘I Robot’. This looked great on the Acer with lots of detail coming to the fore, though inevitably nothing close to the high definition version of this scene I saw on Blu-ray at CEBIT on the Sony stand.

What we needed then was some high definition of our own so we fed the Acer some Divx HD trailers. This really started to get the image to sing - just look at the solid, bright and super detailed images we got from the Shark Tale trailer. I was also satisfied with the viewing angles, so you could comfortably use this in the home. Sound wise the screen was decent too, with a pleasing amount of bass and midrange from the speakers.

Verdict

Overall then, Acer has pulled it off again. With plenty of connection options, pleasing styling and a great picture the only issues are the badge and the problems displaying small text sizes. However, this isn’t a screen for working on, it’s a screen for movies, and at the price there really is nothing to complain about.

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