Screen manufacturers--real differences or hype?

I have seen a lot of threads discussing (and cussing ) screen manufacturers. In an ongoing thread in the HP forum for current and prospective dv6000t owners, much concern was expressed last fall about SEC (Samsung).

My dv6000t has an SEC with the glossy finish, and it appears to me to be a good screen. The colors are vibrant, the fonts are sharp, and the viewing from side to side are quite good. I compared it to my neighbor's Dell 1501, and mine is a bit dimmer, but I would not have realized it had I not put it side by side. Right now with NVIDIA drivers, I can't do much adjusting till they catch up with Vista.

So here's what I'm trying to discover. How important is a particular screen manufacturer? Are there really good screens that come from only a select few, or have folks gotten poor screens from different ones? How important is the GPU (like NVIDIA not being completely ready for Vista?)? What about system bios?

Are there any other factors?

I suspect sometimes that one or two of us decry a manufacturer and then others start finding fault with theirs and the manufacturer unjustly gets a bad rep. Or, maybe a few bad screens go out because of quality control issues and now everyone is concerned about his screen. And, some say "I'm so thankful I got a(n) ______ and everyone thinks that's the screen to have and start talking about their great screens. In actuality, the different screens could be put side by side and we could find things we liked and disliked about all of them.

It seems that computer makers would have to have certain requirements for screen quality from different manufacturers of the computer itself will get a bad rep if a poor manufacturers is allowed to continue to make screens for said computer. Therefore, I find it difficult to believe that computer makers deliberately allow a bad screen manufacturer to continue to make screens for their computers.

It appears impossible to choose who happens to make your screen when you buy a computer since computer companies use a variety of screen manufacturers for their computers. How many times would you have to return a screen to get that "perfect" manufacturer?

Any thoughts?

Bill

 

My impression is that screen manufacturers produce several tiers of screen quality, and that the quality of a notebook screen depends on which tier the notebook manufacturer decided to purchase for that particular book. Not surprisingly, the more expensive notebooks seem to have better screens in general. However I've definitely seen less than top end notebooks with nicer screens than some even more expensive models. It may also be a batch phenomenon, with some manufacturing runs producing better quality screens than others, either due to better quality control or improved manufacturing process. Otherwise, I'm really not sure.

 

None of the manufacturers they use for screens are "bad". Some screens do have different qualities than others though, some being brighter, some having a better color gamut, some being sharper, etc. That is the main differences in manufacturers. And just because on SEC screen is bad for somoene, doesn't mean that someone else will think the same, since "bad" is a very loose term.

The reason for large companies like HP to use so many different manufacturers though is for a safeguard. If they got all their parts from one company, and that company for whatever reason stopped producing items, then HP would be to blame for not getting things out to its customers in time.