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Not content with rewriting the television rulebook with its Cinema 3D TVs, LG is now deploying its low-cost passive 3D screen tech within the PC monitor field. The 23-inch LG Cinema 3D D2342P is on the market now for around £230.
First-generation 3D PC monitors built around Nvidia’s 3D Vision system use the similar active shutter gubbins present in nearly all of flatscreen TVs. This implies bulky and costly shuttering glasses are required to create a 3D effect.Cinema 3D is quite different. Any old 3D specs looted out of your local multiplex will do the job. LG includes one pair of glasses within the box, in conjunction with polarising clip-ons for spectacle wearers.

These 3D glasses and clip-ons are available the box, but any old cinema pair will work just fine.
Design and build
The display is a 23-inch LED-backlit LCD. It sits, rather precariously, on a small pedestal stand with a 15-degree recline. Design-wise it’s generic but smart. The monitor has a lightweight, plasticky construction, albeit with a pleasingly thin bezel.The only embellishment is a bright blue illuminated power button on the bottom right. It sits next to a fistful of small buttons that access the primary menu 3D and Eco display settings. The on-screen display itself is equally discreet. In place of appearing within the centre of the screen it’s apologetically small and lives in a corner.To stress its green credentials, the screen has a dynamic Super Energy Savings mode, that’s all very creditable. Be warned though, that image brightness dims quite significantly when that is engaged.

Here’s the back! It isn’t terribly exciting. You’re the front.
Image quality
2D image quality is something of a mixed bag. Its black levels aren’t particularly deep, through quite a few test footage confirms a high level of detail, with low levels of noise. Tweaking enthusiasts will benefit from the extensive range of picture parameter controls on offer, from colour temperature presets to user-driven RGB levels, contrast and black level. Within the menus there is a High/Low black level toggle — the latter compresses the greyscale (so there’s fewer levels of gradation between black and white) but gives a punchier picture.We found the optimum picture clarity was at 1,680×1,050 pixels at 60Hz. Text clarity is much better via the computer D-Sub port at this resolution than HDMI at 1,920×1,080 pixels. For general PC duties, Web browsing and office work, that is go. 2D gaming looks crisp and fluid.The panel has a pixel pitch — the space between pixels of the similar colour — of 0.265mm x 0.265mm. LG quotes a 5ms response time.
3D performance
Unlike Active Shutter technology, which requires shuttering 60Hz LCD eyeware to create a 3D picture, FPR puts the onus at the TV to tackle stereoscopic filtering.

The ports: D-Sub, DVI and HDMI.
The principal catch with Cinema 3D is that any incoming 3D signal has its resolution halved. Whether it’s Full HD 3D from a Blu-ray or Nvidia’s 3D Vision kit, or bandwidth-friendly side-by-side, what arrives at your peepers has half the horizontal resolution it started with (give or take some upscaling).On a large-screen TV, this lack of resolution is obvious in jaggy diagonals. On a screen as small as this, these artefacts are far less obvious, despite the fact that it’s still possible to look some filter structure within the image. The upside is there is not any electronic flickering to deal with. The sense of depth could also be quite pronounced. The outcome is a 3D viewing experience that trades some clarity for extra comfort.
Tight viewing angle
Naturally, the entire usual ways of displaying 3D are supported: frame packing, side-by-side and top & bottom. You too can flip right-left images. The only caveat is that the viewing angle is astonishingly tight. Deviate from a square-on viewpoint by only a few centimetres and what begins as a transparent image suddenly splits apart.Passive 3D screens like this are quite liable to crosstalk — ghosting — at the vertical plane. Of course, once you’ve aligned the monitor on your own use, this shouldn’t prove an excessive amount of of a subject. Make sure that you sit dead still when gaming or rewatching Ice Age 3D.This acute viewing angle doesn’t just affect 3D. When viewed off-axis in 2D mode, we noticed white-ish greys tinge a fetching shade of pink. For what it’s worth, LG suggests the optimum viewing distance is between 50cm and 90cm.
Conclusion
We’re glad to peer LG’s low-cost, easy at the eye Cinema 3D migrate to the computer monitor market. Freedom from cumbersome, flickering Active Shutter glances is a boon for 3D PC gamers. Just take into accout the overall tightness of its stereoscopic sweetspot — there really isn’t much leeway.If you’ll be able to live with this restriction, LG’s D2342P is a uniquely attractive proposition.Edited by Nick Hide
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