What’s Wrong With Apple’s New Cinema Displays?

Here we go. Comparison details between the new aluminum 23” Cinema HD display and the older 20” clear plastic Cinema display.

I chose two web sites; USAToday.com, and News.com. Both have photos, graphics, jpg images, and gif images. The saved images below are 256 color gif images. There was virtually no difference between displays when viewing jpg photographs, so I thought the color difference might just be related to gif’s only.

First, the image saved from the old 20” clear plastic Cinema display…

All things considered, not a bad image from a web page (USA Today). Now, view the same image captured from Apple’s new aluminum 23” Cinema HD display…

For a better comparison and to see the images full size, Control-Click, select “Open Image In New Window.”

What’s surprising is that the image saved from the new 23” aluminum Cinema HD display looks BETTER than the old 20” clear plastic Cinema display.

That’s the opposite of how the displays look side-by-side. For whatever reason, the contrast of the old displays is more appealing to the eye (at least most eyes who could see the side-by-side differences) than the new display. Is it possible that there’s a “Kodachrome effect” going on with the displays? You know, everything looks better with Kodacrhome film; just not realistic.

However, the new display appears to be a more accurate rendering of the actual images. It’s subtle, but it’s there. What’s wrong with Apple’s new displays? They’re accurate. So accurate that they don’t look as “good” as the older displays.

And there’s no ADC connector.

Oh, one more thing. The “HD” stands for high definition. Plug a good DVD into the new G5s with the 23” Cinema Display and you’re in for a visual treat. This is the way video was meant to be viewed.

What’s wrong with these new displays? They’re good. Very good. So good that realistic doesn’t look as good as the previous display’s Kodachrome effect.