Gateway intros 21" widescreen HD display

Irvine (CA) - Gateway today announced what it claims to be the first 21" high-definition widescreen display with DCDi support.

If you played with the idea to buy that one large LCD for your desktop, but were brought back to reality when looking at the price tag, here may be just what you are looking for. Gateway's FPD2185 stretches out to a 21" size, offers some advanced features and rings in at just under $600 - which is about $50 more than what 20" LCDs are currently going for, according to PriceGrabber.com's Market Reporter.

The specs of the display are slightly above what one expect in this product category, including a 1000:1 contrast ratio, 178 degree viewing angles and a video smoothing feature called DCDi (Directional Correlational Deinterlacing). The display has an 8 ms refresh rate and displays screen content in a 1680 x 1050 resolution.

The FPD2185 may appeal to gamers as well as office workers, as it features a screen rotating capabilities that can change the common landscape position of the screen into a portrait mode. According to Gateway, The benefits of portrait mode make it easier to read Web pages by eliminating the need to scroll in order to see the entire page and offers a better experience for displaying photos in full-screen portrait mode.

Besides the monitor's other standard features, such as composite, S-Video, component, VGA and Digital Video Interface (DVI) inputs, Gateway's new display also integrates a HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) digital rights management chip. As one of the requirements for being Windows Vista certified, such a chip enables high-definition content on the one side, but also restricts the user from recording copyrighted HD material.

Gateway said that the new LCD is available through multiple sales channels now.