LCD – For the Novice and the Expert
by Kristopher Kubicki on September 4, 2003 12:13 AM EST- Posted in
- Displays
Basic LCD exploration
As LCD technology progressed, more and more complex systems were created. The Passive LCD display became the standard LCD during the early 90’s. The fundamental flaw with passive displays was that they could only address the three subpixels as a whole, rather than each individual subpixel.
© Samsung
Thus, TFT displays were born. Born from the same principals of passive displays, active displays went a step further and began to control the degree of how much each subpixel of the liquid crystals were twisted. As a result, the pixel as a whole could produce more than shades of color. Almost every LCD on the market today is capable of producing 256 shades from each sub-pixel. Because there are 3 sub-pixels, this means a typical pixel on a TFT LCD monitor is capable of producing 256 x 256 x 256 hues (16.7 million).
To take an example from today’s monitors, we can look back to our Samsung 172T and Hitachi CML174 reviews. The Samsung 172T produces 16.7M colors, or 256 shades per sub-pixel. The CML174 produces an advertised 262,000 colors and a lower response time, or 64 shades per sub-pixel. AUO, the OEM manufacturer for almost every 16ms response time LCD, sacrifices color hues in order to produce faster responses on the liquid crystal. More simply, there is less electronic modulation with the AUO substrate, and the sub-pixel crystals are able to be twisted faster.
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Anonymous User - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
A good article.I my self use CML174.Made a lot of difference to my eyes compared to CRT.
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Outstanding reading, thanks.mechBgon - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Nice work, Kristopher. : )KristopherKubicki - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
#5 fixed it - sorry.#7 fixed that one too. Yeah rubbing pixels really doesnt do much good. I think NewEgg is going to be pissed when they find out I messed up their monitor pretty good.
#6 Say it aint so!! We want to be the only ones ;)
Kristopher
Shalmanese - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Finally! It took long enough for you to get this out :). Great article, finally an article about LCD's which isn't full of opinion and hearsay.dvinnen - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
ok, maybie you did mean that. Hard to tell, you say you scuffed the monitor, then go on to tell other people how to do it...I problay just need some sleep...
dvinnen - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Rubbing the pixils does more good then harm then?<<<Personally, it seems that rubbing the pixels does more good than harm so continue at your own risk.>>>
Might want to fix that one
dvinnen - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
good to hear it. Seems like alot of the hardware sites are getting there act together.Anonymous User - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
On page 6, where you talk about the cables in the picture (the sentence right below the picture), shouldn't the good cable be the *upper* one or am I missing something?KristopherKubicki - Thursday, September 4, 2003 - link
Yeah, new editors and kind of a revamped AT staff. We went through a lull period after we lost Matthew, but now we have some really good writers and a lot of great content to write about.Just wait till Computex and COMDEX - 3 and 4 reviews per day sounds about right.
Kristopher