Photo gallery: Apple Cinema HD Display (30-inch)The Apple 30-inch Cinema Display is part of a new family of restyled HD displays, which includes a 20-inch and a 23-inch model. Designed as a companion for the Power Mac G5, its sleek, flat anodised aluminium case also lets you use two displays much closer to each other than before.
Upside
Big and beautiful, the LCD Cinema Displays jump on the all-digital DVI connection standard. DVI transmits a digital signal from a digital location in the graphics card to a digital location on the display's screen, so there is no distortion from analog conversion - a problem that can be caused by a weak VGA connection.
It has a whopping 2560 x 1600 resolution. Each display also includes a built-in FireWire 400 hub and a USB 2.0 hub, each with two ports.
Downside
The 30-inch Cinema HD Display requires the next level of DVI connectivity - a 'dual link' to drive the massive amount of pixels to the screen. Unfortunately, this DVI interface is currently found only on the AU$1049 Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL video card (Mac only), raising the price of the whole setup to over AU$7000. The display also requires a Power Mac G5, which starts at around AU$3,599 for a Dual 1.8 GHz and climbs up to AU$5,299 for a Dual 2.5 GHz model.
Outlook
If you want to feast your eyes on more than four million pixels on a high resolution 30-inch flat panel display, you must be prepared to sink over AU$10,650 for the luxury.
In the slightly less stratospheric department, the 20-inch (1,680x1,050) and 23-inch (1,920x1,200) displays will only set you back AU$1,249 and AU$2,099 respectively. They also feature FireWire and USB ports, but use a standard DVI interface. If you have a graphics card that supports DVI with DDC technology for widescreen viewing, you will also be able to use the 20- and 23-inch Apple displays with a PC.
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