Is there an 8" LCD for what i want? See inside

[Arcanum]

I have a Pioneer VSX819 receiver in my living room for music and was wondering if there is such a thing as an 8" LCD monitor or picture frame or some such that I could hook up to it with a composite - but preferably component - cable input so that I could have the album art come up on screen when I have the ipod hooked up to the receiver. If it has a card reader to function as a picture frame as well, that would be great.

I have found the portable TVs that some companies sell, but I don't need all the fancy stuff, just the monitor and the inputs.

I would also be open to a 10" if the rest of the case was slim and didn't take up a lot of space.

Thanks

[jlet]

Lots of choices at "mp3playerstore.com", but poor website design extremely annoying. They also have a store in Montréal QC.

[cfraser]

I am interested in this too, but even 4-5" would do me since it would be very near. I have checked out a whole bunch of digital picture frames, and none in common stores around here had even a composite video input. Even portable DVD players (to use just for the display), that at one time had composite inputs for cheap, no longer do...have to buy a much more expensive model such that almost might as well get a flexible PC display...or a car DVD player with 2 screens.

Now, if you can make a 12V supply using a wall wart or similar, maybe consider something intended for cars from chinavision.com (they're in Canada). Under $50. I have no idea how good they are, but it's the cheapest functional thing I've found so far. Somehow I thought they'd be a lot cheaper and more common...almost all the small nice LCD displays I found cost more than a large one...some real handy ones from the U.S. but cost a small fortune IMO.

Anyway, let me/us know what you find. This has been one of my back-burner wants for a few years now.

[DJDiggler]

Your best bet would be to look into the "Carputer" or In Car Video market and get a 12v wall wart to plug them in. There are several ebay stores that sell these screens, depending on how much you'd want to spend.

Lilliput Screens are great quality, (did a lot of research when I bought one for my car), and there are some crappier but passable ones from Hong Kong on ebay. I bought screens from an ebay store called Skypro ind. a few times and was quite happy.

Here is a site with some small TV's, not sure how good they are to deal with but some good prices for lilliputs..

Lilliput 7" desktop TV with video input and AC adapter

[cavu]

Check this one out ...

<< click for bigger image

You can find this product HERE.

[DJDiggler]

$890???? it's missing about 40" for that price!!

[cfraser]

Here's the one I was thinking of. Probably not that great as a display, but functional (I think??). I'm only willing to pay so much for something that's really only going to display menus and icons, myself. I could turn on the big screen if I really want to see anything, but it seems unnecessary and is less preferable if just playing music.

LCD

Somehow I got the idea when I looked at these quite a while ago that they shipped from Canada. Probably was a Canadian retailer who was selling them at essentially the same price, $45.

[Dwayne Gorniak]

Originally Posted by cfraser

Here's the one I was thinking of. Probably not that great as a display, but functional (I think??). I'm only willing to pay so much for something that's really only going to display menus and icons, myself. I could turn on the big screen if I really want to see anything, but it seems unnecessary and is less preferable if just playing music.

LCD

Somehow I got the idea when I looked at these quite a while ago that they shipped from Canada. Probably was a Canadian retailer who was selling them at essentially the same price, $45.

You know this is a great Idea, and I think that monitor in your post is perfect for what most of us would need. I too play MP3's through my Blu-Ray player USB port using thumb drives. I shut my Plasma off so that I don't have any burn in issues. I was thinking about ideas like this untill I read this post. After reading this post, I think I can see a small LCD monitor sitting on top of my Bu-Ray player in the very neer future.

[DJDiggler]

looking at your link thats a very good price! Those screens look exactly like the ones I bought off ebay from Hong Kong, (I bought in dash ones for the car, but same casing, lettering ect.)

The black levels and viewing angles are horrendous but for a menu screen it would do great... I've been using mine hooked up to a PSP to play MP3's and movies. mine in the car is still going after 3-4 years also!

[cfraser]

Here's the thing that bugs me: all sorts of 4"-8" LCD displays in all sorts of gadgets at cheap prices. But no direct video input. If you want that, you seem to have to buy a much larger display, and you're talking the $120 ballpark. The thing is, many of us might spring for the $120 if we absolutely had to, but we want the small size. Once you combine small size and direct video input into something complete with an AC power supply and "normal" video input connectors, even just composite, it's like you're into custom device territory in North America and the price rockets.

To the OP: I doubt you will find a very small display with component input, it will almost certainly be a single-cable input that most people would use (composite/S/HDMI) for a small "remote" display, and most likely composite as a) cheap and b) most sources only have one HDMI output and that's already used.

I know there is a significant market for a display like we want, I see them asked about fairly regularly in forums. I don't mind doing a little cobbling together to make something work, but would much rather buy something purpose-made. Perhaps an opportunity here for someone. What we want, exactly, probably exists somewhere in Asia, we just have to find it, and searching in English probably doesn't help. The opportunity would be to find it and import it in some quantity so that people don't have to import from Hong Kong (say) themselves...I know many people are uncomfortable with that. Maybe if a bunch of us search we'll find something. Or maybe find that Canadian retailer of that car one I linked to. Or even better, like the linked display but built not to be used in a car so it has all the "right" connectors etc.

[cfraser]

Thought I'd mention that Best Buy has a Dynex portable DVD player with a 9" (IIRC) 16:9 display on sale this week. This is by far the cheapest one I've seen for a couple years that has a video *input*...under $100. The battery operation could be very useful for some people, plus the device does have a useful "secondary" purpose as a portable DVDP. Edit: should mention the screen did look OK, but the whole thing looked very cheap, especially compared to a Sony with A/V input for what would now be 3X the Dynex sale price (it was 2X the price when I compared at them)...I don't like to put cheap-looking stuff in my HT room, the whole thing isn't exactly a "value proposition" if you know what I mean.

I did go another way though. I ended up with an 18.5" Toshiba. This display is actually quite small, but also large enough I can read it from somewhat farther away, which offered more installation options. 9" in 16:9 is pretty small it turns out, and I couldn't really read the info I needed to see unless my face was pretty close to it: the text/graphic info my Oppo BDP-83 player puts out is quite small in some cases. I am blown away by the video quality I get on this display over a 25' *composite* connection (very good and quite expensive coax though). Frankly, I don't understand it. I haven't really used a composite connection for more than 20 years, even the superior S-video not for more than a decade (BDP-83 doesn't have S-video). The display (it's a full TV actually) must "do something", or else the Oppo is "doing something", it shouldn't look this good. Not that PQ really matters for my intended app, but since it is decent it opened up other uses. So I'm pretty pleased, spent about 5X the $$ I wanted to but ended up with something that's much more useful to me than I had expected.

[DJDiggler]

Glad you found something but must be pretty pricey buying a TV just for menus!, (though as you say probably much more useful than the small screens above). Another cheaper way may be a computer monitor? You can get a HDMI splitter for $20 or so and have a full res pic going to a 19"-23" monitor (going for $100-$200).

[cfraser]

^ Yes, it was sort of expensive. Especially when you can get a "name brand" plasma with 4X+ the viewing area for less than double the price.

However, I couldn't read the 9" display at about 3' without straining, which is the closest I could put it. Some of the info was just too small. The footprint of the larger display's base is about the same as the portable DVDP. The really small displays have very nasty contrast ratios, often less than 100 or even 50 in real terms, and have very limited viewing angles. There are specs and then there are the practical usage realities...

I do play a lot of music though, and I'm always wary of leaving the same mostly-static display up on the Kuro for hours at a time. Yeah, like I inferred, it's hard to justify on a totally practical basis, as is most of my HT system...

The Toshiba display is "remarkable" for its flexible inputs. That's why I chose it over others. Haven't been a Tosh fan in the past, but I was impressed this time. I was looking at computer monitors for a long time, they are cheaper, but by the time I got the necessary stuff to hook it up it wouldn't have been cheaper. Plus I get the ATSC tuner in the Tosh. Yes, HDMI with a splitter would be even better. As it is I didn't have to buy anything else besides the display to do what I wanted.

I may get a monoprice HDMI splitter and long HDMI cable next time I do an order. But the composite pic coming *directly* out of the BDP-83 is "unbelievable" to me. The composite signal coming out of my Denon 3808 AVR is total crap; never did figure out why, will play with it again. It so totally degrades the composite input signals it doesn't make sense since component passes through "perfectly", IOW it should just be a "switch". There would be advantages, if its composite worked right, to hooking the remote display to the AVR. Using a split HDMI output would be advantageous in that regard. Yup, turning this into a real project... Edit: I think the Oppo puts out a much wider bandwidth composite signal than is standard. It must be, judging by its look, and the Denon composite switching BW is "normal" so hugely degrades it. The Oppo does some things not exactly by-the-book, especially beneficial for its digital hi-res music output if you have external DACs.

Sorry for being so OT. Couldn't find the other thread(s??) where we talked about this stuff recently. Maybe people got some ideas or considerations for using "small" displays at least.

Edit again: IMPORTANT!! I have been looking into this for so long I forgot some basic info in the last few months, the basic reason why I figured out I needed to use an *analog* video signal long ago. Do NOT use HDMI for this small "music display" if you are using HDMI to deliver the music content. And especially not with a cheap/monoprice splitter. You will almost certainly be SCREWED big time. Especially for hi-res music. Or if you use something like the Oppo BDP-83 for SACD via HDMI. It gets technical, but for simplicity let's just say you do not want any negotiation whatsoever between your "music display" and the source player.