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My Zenith-branded LG Electronics L1715S seems to have picked up a strange habit suddenly. It will display an image for about half a second before reverting to a blank screen. The power indicator stays green (i.e. not in stanby mode) when it does this. If I power it off, then on again, it will display an image for a half second before going dark again. During the start-up sequence, it won't display the POST screen, however it will flash the Boot-loader screen with all the smart/drive info. Once again, returns to dark. I tested it also by connecting it to my laptop--same issue, so it's not a virus or something isolated on my desktop. I've tried shining a light onto it, and that doesn't produce an image so I don't think the backlights have blown.

Anyone have any ideas?

Never heard of shining a light into an LCD panel. What's that supposed to do?

It sounds like either a backlight issue o some kind of power issue. If you've tried it on another system and the same issue occurs, it's likely that the monitor is at fault. If it's under warranty, try contacting Zenith to get a replacement or a repair.

It's supposed to mimic the backlight effect (to an extent).

Monitor is way out of warranty I think. I can't even find it listed on Zenith's support site.

So, does anyone have any recommendations? I've done some measuring, and 24" is out of the question. My desk is only 18" deep, so a monitor that size would go into my peripheral vision. My desk is a bit over 39.5" long, fwiw. A 24" monitor would cover probably about 55-60% of the horizontal space. And sitting that close, is ridiculous. I'm starting to think even 22" would seem a bit large/excessive/hard to see all of the screen.

The backlights are pretty much all-or-nothing devices, though obviously there's more than one of them. If you're seeing a proper image, however briefly, they're probably not the problem. I once had a CRT monitor that behaved like that and I "fixed" / avoided it by switching to the other input. (The original input was RGB component -- this was an old, high-end monitor -- and had worked fine for a while so I don't know exactly what the problem was). If your monitor has multiple inputs you could try that -- if you're using the analog input is it possible you've changed something (either in the video card driver utilities or on the monitor itself) so it no longer likes the signal it's seeing? Have you tried different resolutions (forcing the monitor to scale, or not)? Of course it's also possible the power supply in the monitor is kaput, and it tries producing an image and then gives up.

You get used to the "wideness" of wide monitors, but an 18" depth on a desk does bring it pretty close to your nose at normal typing distance. You'd probably be fine with a 22" once you got used to it, but there are 20" widescreen available too.

20 vs. 22 is mostly an issue of pixel-pitch. I really loved that 17" LCD because it was the same resolution as a 19" but was smaller, so the pixel-pitch gave it a really nice, sharp image. My laptop also seems to have a really nice sharp image as well. So I'm not quite sure how much I'd like it. I suppose, since I'll be buying this from MicroCenter (I don't really want to trust them delivering it to me correctly, as I'm now at an apartment), I can buy the 22" one, try it out and see if I like it and if not return it?

Well I picked up the 22" one tonight. I like it so far. It's mildly overwhelming in size. I turned on ClearType to increase text quality. That improved that bit quite a bit. It was pretty awful at first. It does make it kind of blurry on some cases but for the most part it's a lot easier to read. I've had to turn down some settings in games like Counter-Strike: Source but that doesn't surprise me since I'm running a lowly 8600GTS.

CampinCarl wrote:

Well I picked up the 22" one tonight. I like it so far. It's mildly overwhelming in size. I turned on ClearType to increase text quality. That improved that bit quite a bit. It was pretty awful at first. It does make it kind of blurry on some cases but for the most part it's a lot easier to read. I've had to turn down some settings in games like Counter-Strike: Source but that doesn't surprise me since I'm running a lowly 8600GTS.

Make sure you experiment with the Cleartype Tuner (or download the PowerToy control panel applet). Sometimes it takes a bit of time with a couple of different variations to find the setting that works best for you.

CampinCarl wrote:

I've had to turn down some settings in games like Counter-Strike: Source but that doesn't surprise me since I'm running a lowly 8600GTS.

My 8600gts sitting in a box waves hi.