LCD Display Questions - Longevity and Monochrome? 139
Jack Frost IV asks: "Since higher resolution LCD panels have started to become a lot more common, many people have been complaining about dead pixels. I just received two SGI flat panels direct from the factory, and each shipped with a single dead pixel. In fact, the second display was a replacement for the first (for an issue unrelated to the dead pixel). While I understand the difficulties in manufacturing the displays, the single dead pixel doesn't concern me right now, as I don't notice it often. What bothers me is how many more pixels these displays will lose during a lifetime; say over the next three to five years. I want to replace a lot of my CRTs (Yes, *some* of us don't do color critical work, and LCDs are perfectly OK) with LCD panels, but if, say, a dozen pixels are going to die in 3 - 5 years, it's going to be quite annoying. SGI claims that once the pixel burns out, you'll never notice it was gone... but I don't buy it. Can anyone explain some of the longevity and degredation issues relating to flat panels?"
O'Bunny queries: "How come nobody apparently sells monochrome LCD monitors for PC-like devices? I'd love to have a largish (say, 1600x1200) flat monitor that: doesn't weigh five thousand pounds; isn't fifteen feet thick; and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
The rationales that I've heard behind the high costs of these monitors were:
- The manufacturing yield is low because of the large number of transistors that need to all work properly to display colours.
- The economy of scale currently is aimed at laptop users, for whom a 1600x1200 screen is impractically large (unless you happen to be Andre the Giant)
Ignoring the second part, why doesn't anyone make a decentmonochrome LCD monitor for those of us who want a large screen but don't necessarily need color?
In my case, I want to edit multi-channel audio. A Color display adds almost nothing to the information that I extract from the screen. I can select, cut, copy paste, apply effects, and otherwise mangle the sounds as well on a 1-bit per pixel display as I can on a 32-bpp monster.
I am also a technical writer. The documents I write are produced on a B&W laser printer, mostly. Certainly, on-line documents (and even most printed ones) can benefit from intelligent use of colour for various reasons, but most printed documents end up in black and white (mostly for cost reasons). Again, colour adds little to the experience.
So, I guess my question really comes down to the following:
- Where can I get a large monochrome flat-panel monitor for a PC?
- If I can't get one for $less than a colour flat panel, why not?"
Re: UNIX (Score:1)
ls --help
Usage: ls [-aAbBcCdDfFgGhHiIklLmnNopqQrRsStTuUvwxX1]
Long options:
--all, --almost-all, --escape, --block-size=SIZE,
--ignore-backups, --color[=WHEN], --directory,
--dired, --classify, --format=WORD, --full-time,
--full-time, --no-group, --human-readable, --si,
--indicator-style=WORD, --inode, --ignore=PATTERN,
--kilobytes, --dereference, --numeric-uid-gid,
--literal, --file-type, --hide-control-chars,
--show-control-chars, --quote-name,
--quoting-style=WORD, --reverse, --recursive,
--size, --sort=WORD, --time=WORD, --tabsize=COLS,
--width=COLS, --help, --version.
This would be funny if it weren't so horribly
true. I mean, this is a nightmare come true.
This is worse than PL/I and OS/360 combined.
Lenght of life? (Score:1)
Prices ARE coming down (Score:1)
like, but LCD prices are dropping. I found a
Princeton LCD17 for $699 "while supplies last" at
the local Fry's earlier this week. 15-inch LCD
panels are easy to find for less than $500 now.
When comparing CRT and LCD displays, I think that
a lot of people fall into the "equal size trap".
I.e. they think that they need a 17" LCD to
replace a 17" monitor, etc. This fails to account
for LCD's superior clarity, lack of flicker, and
visible area. Most people could happily replace a
17" CRT with a 15", etc.
1600x1200 is just fine for a laptop (Score:1)
and leon's getting LAARRRGER! (Score:1)
LCD is a good choice (Score:1)
They were not really more expensive than good quality cathodic display (about one third more) but what a gain of room on our desktop!
So bad Apple doesn't manufacture them anymore (the new ones don't have a VGA connector) but at least they have proven that it was possible to sell good quality LCDs at a reasonable price.
Re:FPS in LCD? (Score:1)
Analogue resolution is measured in horizontal scan lines, you can't say it's "640x480", it doesn't work that way in the analogue world. A BetacamSP deck can record upwards of 500 lines of resolution, a DV deck (Consumer mini-dv, dvcam, dvcpro) can record 480 lines (Cause it's D1 and uses a different shaped pixel than computer monitors, the resolution is actually 720x486 which would turn out to be 3:2 on a computer monitor, but is 4:3 on a TV.), etc.
Every frame is divided into fields, upper and lower. If you numbered them starting at 1 for the first line, the odd numbers would be displayed first, followed by the even ones. So you have approximitely 30 frames times 2 fields, so you actually have 60 frames per second at an effective "resolution" of app. 240 scan lines a frame. This increases temporal resolution by decreasing spatial resolution. This is called interlacing. It's also why when you pause video and there's movement it will jump back and forth, from odd to even fields.
Pal is 25 fps, with two field per frame, so it has a slightly small temporal resolution (with only 50 effective frames per second) but the spatial resolution is larger, there's more scan lines per frame.
Most 35mm film is projected at 24fps, however the shutter opens and closes several times that every second, if it only opened and closed 24 times every second the flicker would be very noticeable. It still is if you sit very close to a large screen.
In video this is called "progressive". Progressive is where the entire frame is displayed at once, and not in fields like interlaced video. There are a couple different compatible HD formats, one is 24p (p=progressive, i=interlaced) fps, the other 30p fps, and the other is 30i (effectively 60fps). the 24p would be for movies and stuff that originated on film or a 24p HD camera. The 30p stuff would be video content mostly, and the 30i stuff would be for sports where a faster shutter speed would keep movement sharper.
It's interesting to note that most DVDs with content that's from film actually store it as 24 frames per second/progressive. And your DVD player does what's called a 3:2 pull down in hardware to turn it into 30fps, that's also why you can freeze a DVD without interlacing artifacts of the picture jumping back and forth. I'm not sure how PAL DVD players do this, as the preferred method for transferring and distributing PAL VHS tapes was to just run the film at 25 fps, which sped it up. I think the PAL version of Titanic was actually something like 10 minutes shorter than the NTSC version.
But film can be shot and played at virtually any speed mechanically possible.
prices are dropping (Score:1)
Re:FPS in LCD? (Score:1)
The reason it looks okay is because each frame is motion-blured. It is not a perfect snapshot like a computer rendering is -- it represents the complete range of motion that occurs for the 1/24th of a second of a frame. Look at a still during a scene with a lot of motion to get the idea.
The inter-frame time is a very small fraction of the frame time, which is why it isn't noticeable at 24 fps.
If movies weren't motion blurred, they wouldn't look very good.
I am not Andre the giant but... (Score:1)
Not so. IBM do a ThinkPad [ibm.com] with a 1600x1200 15" display.
Re:FPS in LCD? (Score:1)
The
Same
Color?
Re:FPS in LCD? (Score:1)
Re:Economies of hype (Score:1)
Second is that acording to modern electrical thoery the electrons actually traval from the negitivly charged screen to the positivly charged electron "gun".
Re:OT: CRT bad pixels (Score:1)
It is like all electronics it is ether going to work forever or start going bad early.
Re:2 pixels is "acceptable" (Score:1)
A pen did that much damage? Wow. I dropped an IRON, which was also full of water onto the top of my closed Gateway solo 9300 laptop a few months after I purchased it, it's been over a year now and still no dead/stuck pixels. I guess maybe I'm just lucky? The iron did no damage other than cracking the plastic on the back of the lcd screen, luckily the water didn't go anywhere (but it did make the iron heavier).
Re:What about B/W printers? (Score:1)
Re:FPS in LCD? (Score:1)
> Not that the human eye needs 30 but still....
That's an urban myth.
Well, OK, you might not need more than 30 depending on what you are doing, but you can certainly see far higher than 30.
Hmm.... wonder why TV uses 25 fps and film 24 fps then. They don't look to bad to me, but when you move to lower frame-rates the inter-frame flicker becomes noticeable. There is a very real limit here, set by the intergration time in our rods and cones.
You're probably being confused by motion blur.
Motion blur is certainly the key issue here. In graphics rendering you don't have motion blur, each frame is perfectly sharp. For perceptually pleasing results, moving objects should be smeared an amount that depends on the amount of inter-frame movement. This happens as a side effect in cameras, so film captured this way looks OK at 24 fps. In graphics rendering on the other hand you will have what is known as temporal aliasing due to moving objects being too sharp. By increasing the frame-rate, an acceptable blurring will instead occur in the retina.
Re: So? (Score:1)
Only a loser (noun: unsuccessful person, not a winner) would misspell 'loser' as 'looser' (adjective: more loose, less tight).
It's actually quite common among non native English speakers.
How about *small*, colored LCDs? (Score:1)
I'd like to spend no more than ~$170 on a 10-inch, 800x600 LCD screen.
Why?
Most people stick their brandy-new LCD screens right up where the CRT used to be. Up high on the desk, where people get cricks in their necks 'cause you're not designed to sit and look straight ahead like that... I'd like to position the LCD on a tray about 16 inches in front of my face at about a 45 degree angle down, and have the keyboard under the tray at level-forearm height (I'm a touch-typist).
Like a book. When do you see people holding a book at arms' length, level with their eyes, while sitting ramrod-straight in a chair? You don't, because people hold the book in a more *comfortable* position; hands low, book low (but not too low).
But I can't find any 10-inch color LCDs with a connector that I can just plug in to my computer! Any info? Somewhere? Someone?
Thanks,
-lf
Re:What about B/W printers? (Score:1)
guess this goes to show that companies like xerox care more about functionality than looks.
longevity (Score:1)
The other question was about longevity.
I have heard that LCD's will last a rather long time.
Does anyone know different?
Point and Grunt
Re:Well (Score:1)
second question is easy (Score:1)
duh.
Re:But what about smaller screens? (Score:1)
Oh, and learn to spell/punctuate properly. A few errors usually aren't a big deal, but you post was almost incomprehensible.
Another use for LCD screens: RF Lab (Score:1)
Cheers,
Angel
Health industries uses Monochrome LCD (Score:1)
Many hospital xray departments are going to PACS systems -ie digital xrays. No film used. The images are displayed on very highresolution monitores. A radilogist looks at the image on CRT screens. (mono, very large, hires upto 3000x3000, high contrast).
In operating theartes, emergency rooms, intensive care units etc, space and portability is a necisity. In these places we use mono LCDs. These are resonable resolution + brightness, but can be hung on an arm over the operating table so the surgeon can see while operating.
Given how much money is spent on health technology this could be a big market as more hospitals move to filmless systems.
Elivs
Several flaw in this (Score:1)
Re:Go for resolution instead! (Score:1)
Why the low standard? (Score:1)
I mean, it used to be 9 dead pixels/line for the first mac laptop, but dead pixels are BAD. Why would you invest several hundred or thousand for a really good LCD and get 2 dead pixels and shrug it off? I mean, people are complaining about the G4 cube's cracks.
Oh, and TIP: If you moisten a tissue and slowly rub around the dead LCD pixel, it hopefully will change back or get unstuck in color.
Re:What about B/W printers? (Score:1)
Re:uhm, it's not a big deal (Score:1)
I would say 1 out of every 3 has a dead (most seem to be stuck on green) pixel, and only 5 or so have more than 1 (though 1 lcd has 4 or 5 dead pixels).
Out of the 5 mac powerbooks that friends, family members, or I have owned, not one has had a dead pixel. This includes a a PB520 I bought in '95 that I recently sold.
Re:2 pixels is "acceptable" (Score:1)
> effect of aperature grille monitors which need
> the wires to keep the vertical wires straight.
For whatever the duration of the patent, "aperture grille monitor" == "Sony Trinitron" display. That was at least 17 years, perhaps 20 and only expired maybe 8 years or so ago. I'm sure sony had licensed producers but the bulk of non-shadow mask displays carried the Sony brand.
DF
Blame Microsoft (again) (Score:1)
Re:Economies of hype (Score:1)
Re:LCD display trivia: burn-in! (Score:1)
Dell came in and replaced the display (still warranty) and the one thing I realized right away was that the new display was brighter than the old one.
Otherwise: no dead pixles here
Uhm, ok. (Score:1)
Mono LCD monitor demand, despite a cheaper price, will always be a niche market product. And, being niche market will mean that eventually the monitor will be MORE expensive than their colour LCD counterparts once the laws of supply and demand kick in.
Re:1 bit Mono? (Score:1)
I'm a little concerned about whether OS's and applications are still designed to work with 1-bit displays, though. I haven't seen one in use for the past four years or so, which suggests that application developers might have stopped checking to make sure that their programs work well in b/w mode. (As an example, you wouldn't be able to distinguish between the red underlines vs green underlines that MSWord uses to mark words with bad spelling vs words with bad grammar.)
Re:B/W LCDs (Score:1)
Bingo
You got it right on the nose. An unsellable LCD screen of any colour or size is called Toxic Waste .
More margin is needed just to dispose of the manufacturing cull, which is still quite high (something approximating 20%).
lcd longevity (Score:1)
I've heard 10,000 hours operational life quoted until the LCD dims to half its original brightness.
Re:Resolutions (Score:1)
Re:2 pixels is "acceptable" (Score:1)
¹Audio spectrum display requires more than 1-bit (Score:1)
I would trust the original poster to know their own needs. Some of us are old enough to remember working with b/w displays and remember what they're good for. The story submitter described uses that 1-bit displays are perfectly suited for.
You need at least 4 bits of grayscale to get a decent-looking spectral display of audio, that is, the energy at each (time, frequency) pair.
12fps is the minimum... (Score:1)
Acctualy, it's 12fps. You can still whatch something at 12fps and have your eyes tricked into thinking it's something moving. As opposed to just a whole lot of pictures changing.
Another thing I might as well add. While you maynot notice the difference between 30fps and 150fps. If one was to rotate the camera fast, or film a car driving past. There would be more motion blur at the lower speed.
Even with all the fancy techology today. there are still shots that you can't shoot on film (24fps) because of motion blur and the like.
Re:Resolutions (Score:1)
Sort of... don'f foget the little bits of phospher of what ever it's called. Spray a few water droplets on your monitor, and you will see lots of little 'pixels', each one with a r,g,b part.
Re:B/W vs. color (Score:1)
Re:How about *small*, colored LCDs? (Score:1)
Then there's Sony's 13" LCD --apparently the only 13" LCD made in the world --which is very popular in hospitals and similar places since it's small but still does 1024x768. That puppy is 900 dollars. Even though larger screens are below 600 dollars.
this "magical marketplace" thing sucks ass.
Re:Economies of hype (Score:2)
I remember kids in school who had had the laptops because they fit pretty in their dorm rooms.. Apple sells a lot of real powerful pretty notebooks to people who don't know a MIP from a Mouse.
Re:Economies of hype (Score:2)
That said, I'm pretty sure I don't need my groovy designer sunglasses, or my Nokia 8260, I'm no better, it's just worth noting that looks count in the LCD game.
Re:2 pixels is "acceptable" (Score:2)
Dead pixels are acceptable for laptop displays. Last time I checked, the rule for IBM Thinkpads is that you can only get the panel replaced if it has eight or more dead pixels.
- Sam
Re:Economies of hype (Score:2)
You know, I was thinking about that as I was typing it and it didn't quite seem right. I just saw the figures briefly yesterday, so I'm just going from my ever falable memory. I know Fred's looking at getting their research released so they can post it on their webpage. In any case, the point was that LCDs represent a significant cost savings after only a couple years of average (5 days/wk, 8 hr/day) use.
-"Zow"
Re:2 pixels is "acceptable" (Score:2)
Monitors from Sony have those lines through the middle. You get used to them, not a big deal.
I don't see any problem w/it really.
Simply Demand (Score:2)
1) Get a petition going online to ask the companies to start making them
2) Submit a business plan to a few venture capatalist that will help fund a business that manufactor and distribute them
3) If you have the know how build one yourself (If might not be the case but hey I never know)
4) Or do nothing
Have fun
Re:monitor on a server? (Score:2)
Check out PC Weasel [realweasel.com]. It is a card that emulates a MDA but pipes the output over serial. With this you can run your system headless, and still be able to get into the BIOS.
Re:Resolutions (Score:2)
The reason isn't hard to explain.
Each LCD pixel is a physical object which can be either on or off.
With a CRT, an electron gun sprays electrons on to a screen, and they are moved magnetically to the right position. So there is no physical object that corresponds to a display pixel. This means that you can theoretically have an unlimited number of resolutions on a CRT.
With a LCD, each pixel is a physical dot, so there is really only one "correct" radiation for a LCD. Some LCDs can "fake" this resolution better than others - my (well, the company bought it for me) spiffy new SGI 1600SW LCD does a pretty good job at 800x600 and 1280x1024, even though its native resolution if 1600x1024. But try a cheap laptop screen sometime - look at the console text and you'll see that it's often difficult to read due to poor quality at lower resolutions.
Other than games (which are not within my area of interest), I see no reason to want to change a LCD monitor to a lower resolution.
Hope that helps.
D
----
supply .. demand (Score:2)
The prices on color displays are coming down. In another 2 years they will probably be less than 500 for a 17 inch and it will be of very good quality.
Personally I think this will be the next technology push. Flat panal display devices. SImilar to lap tops, but more along the lines of the sony pc that is super thin. basically like the mac cube adn its display. Only instead of it being 3k it will be 800 for the whole deal. Wait and in a year or two you will see these come down.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Re:FPS in LCD? (Score:2)
The eye only sees one small detail at once and shifts to another one approximately 70 times a second. I guess that's why the ergonomic frequency barrier in monitor refresh rates is usually 72Hz.
There is a 70 Hz tremor in the eye called nystagmus tremor which is probably what you are thinking about. This only affects refresh rates on CRT displays, and only when your eyes are close to the screen though. The problem occurs due to interferrence between the high frequency screen flicker and the eye tremor.
AFAIK the pixels stay lit on LCDs in-between frames, so there is no screen flicker that could interfere with the eye tremor. For this reason the refresh rate is better called an update rate on an LCD.
Re:B/W vs. color (Score:2)
Issues like supporting cost-effective monochrome displays with its resulting lower prices also means lower commissions and less profits. Its ironic that I know so many people who would comparison shop for the cheapest soap and shampoo prices seem too often reliant on a salesmen for higher priced goods, who themselves are usually more interest in furthering their own ends rather then the needs of their clients. I agree that monochrome displays would likely fit the needs of most people most of the time -- but tell them that they might need it 1% of the time and they will not give up the option.
Re:FPS in LCD? (Score:2)
B/W LCDs (Score:2)
Re:B/W vs. color (Score:2)
Go for resolution instead! (Score:2)
it'll come just wait (Score:2)
The other reason they don't sell now is no demand, and not enough volume for the reduction in margins which the price point we want necessitates. Used mac b/w laptops are still sitting in the 2nd hand
stores..
Re:There's barely a market for black and white (Score:2)
Dell, and Compaq [compaq.com]. They're not exactly cheap, but with a KVM you would only need one of them for a whole room full of servers.
I'm pretty sure that other manufacturers have similar products.
Monochrome displays (Score:2)
Although the notion of a monochrome display is noble (why do I need more than one colour to read text?), the problem remains that more people are likely to go for devices like the all-singing proprietary NVidia GeForce cards. It's all because people don't understand that there is an application of computers beyond that which has been popularised by the mainstream press and "EasyPC" initiatives that aim to reduce the computer to the level of other consumer devices like the TV or washing machine. As long as there are geeks around, the true importance of computers will not be forgotten, but as time progresses we will find it more difficult to find hardware that meets are needs without exceeding our needs, or our budget.
All in all, of course, mainstream computing has done more to bring down the cost of hardware for geeks who are actually interested in the technology, and for this we must be thankful. But the simple, one-purpose devices analogous to the *NIX tools designed to do one thing right, will be the casualties of this new trend. Our best hope is to get over it and enjoy cheap, powerful computers while they last before embedded devices take over the world and put the PC back where it was two decades ago.
Re:Economies of hype (Score:2)
Subpixel text rendering on color LCDs (Score:2)
You could use more or less the same process, only with monochrome elements instead of R, G and B -- and have a display with three times the horizontal resolution of a color display.
Microsoft Cleartype uses subpixel text rendering [grc.com] to take advantage of the fact that each LCD pixel is actually three. Apple used a similar technique for text rendering on TV monitors. And you can enable subpixel text in recent XFree86 [xfree86.org].
Re:B/W vs. color (Score:2)
- Something else to consider is that most applications are not optimized to work in a B/W environment.
I think his point was that his application didn't require a color environment. Seems odd to me that anyone would write an application that didn't make the most of the color display that was available.Market. (Score:2)
There's barely a market for black and white (Score:2)
For the longest time, I has a 1280x1024 black and white screen on my desk. It is just easier on the eyes, and it's perfect for coding and e-mail. I eventually replaced it with a color screen because of all the web sites I had to use that abuse color.
What is an interesting market once someone uncovers it, is cheap 640x480 B&W LCD's to use as a console in colo facilities. I hate wasting 6U os rack space for a monitor, and I'm not the only one
Good source for LCDs (Score:2)
Ive bought some color And B&W lcds from Earth Tech. (URL above)
You can get a 12" color lcd for just under $500usd
You can also get a 9.4" monocorome for $300usd
much more expensive for the same as a CRT, but overall not bad.
They recently changed their inventory it seems so I cant find any of the more fitting LCDs i once thought they had, but may be useful none the less.
--Jon
But what about smaller screens? (Score:2)
uhm, it's not a big deal (Score:2)
LCD (Score:2)
Monochrome (Score:2)
Re:FPS in LCD? (Score:2)
Re:Economies of hype (Score:2)
FPS in LCD? (Score:2)
3x horizontal resolution for free? (Score:2)
Consider the cost of space (Score:3)
This is because the receptionist needs only one monitor, while even a small operations center needs, at a minimum, about 40.
Even with 17" LCDs going for four or five times the price of CRTs, it saves money in the long run due solely to the fact that the operations consoles can be shortened by about two feet each.
This might not hold true if you're building a facility in the middle of nowhere, or if all those LCDs wind up having a maximum life of about five years; but where real estate is even moderately expensive, the rental on the floor space CRTs would take up would make their total cost of ownership higher than that of LCDs in about five years.
I expect that the break-even point would come even sooner if one was inclined to figure in the cost differential of powering and cooling the things. CRTs use a lot more power and generate a lot more heat than LCDs. I used to use the back of a Sun 20" monitor to keep my breakfast bagel warm in the mornings until I was ready to eat it. The vents there were so well suited to this task that I think they must have been designed for this purpose.
Of course, the potential problem with this reasoning is that CRTs last almost forever, while all these LCDs might well sputter and die within that five-year period.
LCD display trivia: burn-in! (Score:3)
As for dead pixels: Sometimes you can 'un-stick' them by massaging the screen over a dead pixel very gently.
The only problem I've had with my Apple Cinema Display is some mild 'burn-in,' believe it or not. Apparently with any LCD display, if you leave a static image on the screen for a while, the LCD hardware will 'remember' that image and you'll continue to see a faint ghost of it on the screen. I see this most often when I've been in Mac OS X for a few hours, and then I reboot into LinuxPPC -- I can still see the ghost of my Mac OS menu bar at the top of the screen! The ghost stays even if I power down the computer and display for a while. I've been told that the ghost will go away after as much time as it was on the screen to begin with (if the menu bar was there for eight hours, its ghost will fade after eight hours), and that's been borne out by my experience.
Re:What about B/W printers? (Score:3)
I see your point, but it depends on what type of printing you do. I work with black and white "laser" printers that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (I don't really know how much, you'd have to talk to Xerox [xerox.com] about the price, the bean counters could tell you though). What, that much? Well yea, but they rip and print 180 pages a minute. They are variable data printing monsters, but if you've got several million b&w unique pages to print, that's what you need.... It's all about finding the right piece of equipment for the job.
Why not B&W (Score:3)
1) Minimal demand
2) Lower per unit profit margins
The first problem is that ultimately most people want to buy color LCD panels. It's not worth it to most LCD manufacturers to bother with the small segment of people who would be happy with large black and white LCD panels.
The other issue is that with Black and White, because it is simpler technology, ultimately their profit margins are going to be lower per unit. That means that they have to sell that many more in order to make a profit. If they charge enough to recoup their investment it wouldn't be that much more for people to shell out for the color display.
To see how these economics work, look at the price of processors in the market. There's a certain optimum point where you get a significant amount of power for a low price. If you reduce the power of the chip, the price doesn't drop much because. So you end up in the bizarre situation that you could pick up a K6-300 for just slightly more (or maybe even less) than an old pentium 60. It's just all economics.
---
Re:Economies of hype (Score:3)
Further, a friend in Japan tells me that the number of relatively new tube monitors appearing on the street during garbage day has risen dramatically over that last year as everyone is trying to recover a couple of extra square feet and are moving in troves over to LCDs.
B/W vs. color (Score:3)
Colors, especially monochrome reds/greens/blues appear nearly identical in B/W, yet these are often used together as background/foreground colors in dialogs and are rendered largely incomprehensable in a monochrome environment --appearing as dark grey lettering on a darker greys/black background).
My first laptop 10 years ago was monochrome and the number of times I had problems even then (when monochrome displays were everywhere) was daunting. Yes, if an application is "monochrome" aware you wouldn't have a problem, but the number of apps that fall into that category now has seemingly all but disappeared.
Re:There's barely a market for black and white (Score:3)
Re:monitor on a server? (Score:3)
Yes, things like Linux do have support for a serial console, but that won't help you if you need to get at the BIOS. There are a few BIOS's that support serial consoles too, but they're rare.
And then there's NT. Alas, people do run servers on NT, and NT has no concept of a serial console that I'm aware of.
Re:FPS in LCD? (Score:3)
That's the minimum speed, below which we lose the impression of continous motion and start to see seperate images (actually, 18fps is roughly the min -- film was sped up to 24fps so that a soundtrack could be run on the edge of the same piece of film without sounding too crappy). The maximum fps we can discern is much higher (somewhere between 70fps and 150fps, depending on who you ask) -- beyond which point most people could not tell the difference caused by additonal frames per second.
Douglas Trumbull did a lot of research into this area, and created a process called Showscan that uses 70mm film projected at 60fps, which is supposed to look incredible!
Just look away from your TV or computer screen, look out the window and watch the real world, and see how crappy our screens look in comparision. They could be (and will be) a lot better.
Re:Economies of hype (Score:3)
They last a long time... (Score:3)
It seems for some reason that one or two dead pixels seem common place, but once the bad ones die off when the monitor is new, the rest seem to last a long time from what I have seen.
monitor on a server? (Score:3)
1/4th of our View Sonic 15 Flats failed in 2 years (Score:3)
Economies of hype (Score:4)
ISO standards for pixel fault on flat panels... (Score:4)
ISO standard 13406-2 is a completion of ISO 9241-3, -7 and -8, which already regarded LCD's. Classes I to IV are defined in ISO 13406-2.
Class I (theoretical) allows for no pixel faults.
Class II allows for 2 "light pixels", 2 "dark pixels" and 5 "other faults", per million pixels.
Class III allows for 5, 15 and 50 respectively.
Class IV allows for 50, 150 and 500.
"light pixel" is when a pixel is >75% lighter.
"dark pixel" is when a pixel is >75% darker (or "death", I presume).
"other fault" is, well, for other faults (e.g. a subpixel is defect, giving the pixel a distored hue - think color-stuck pixels).
Class II is considered acceptable for office use. Classes III and IV are not.
For a 1,024*768 panel, which is 786,432 pixels, that makes 1.57 light pixels (rounds up to 2), 1.57 dark pixels (rounds up to 2) and 3.93 other faults (rounds up to 4).
This give a maximal number of defective pixels of 8, which is 0.001 % of the screen surface.
This data is very useful when you're a techie on the field and you're being annoyed by some customer who keeps asking for a new monitor because his/her got one or two death pixels. You can tell the monitor still meets the industry standard and therefore will not be replaced.
As for the ViewSonic monitor, I suppose ViewSonic was pretty nice to you when they replaced your "defective" monitor.
Re:FPS in LCD? (Score:4)
Well, OK, you might not need more than 30 depending on what you are doing, but you can certainly see far higher than 30. You're probably being confused by motion blur. You should also ask yourself whether the concept of 'frames per second' is really applicable to how the human eye works.
What about B/W printers? (Score:4)
Yet no body sells them because they would make less money on them.
1 bit Mono? (Score:4)
Actually, what you want is grey scale, not 1 bit Mono.
You can see the effect by taking any BW photo, and convert it to 1 bit color.
You also see this in printing. Laser Print IS 1 bit color, more or less, but you get true photo-grade at about 1500 dpi. Contrast this with grey scale, say on a screen, where 70 - 100 dpi is adequate for a photo, if you are using grey scale. 100 dpi in 2 bit color is horrible.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
B&W LCD Monitors have some purpose (Score:4)
Re:Economies of hype (Score:5)
While your point is well taken, another major advantage of LCD displays (other than the space savings as noted by another poster) is the power and cooling savings. Fred Cohen [all.net] had his students in the CCD [sandia.gov] do a power and heat analysis of all their equiptment in the wake of the CA power crisis. They found that a 17" LCD monitor only drew 1/10 the power and generated 1/4 the heat of a 17" CRT monitor meaning that the higher cost for the LCD monitor would pay for itself after just a couple years of use.
-"Zow"
Longetivity (Score:5)
YMMV (Score:5)
I can only speak from my own experience: