A practical guide to choose your next display

[anfieldude]

A Practical Guide to Display Technologies and What would work for You.

As a calibrator, I get asked this question a lot.

What is the best display out there?

Unfortunately, there is no one correct answer.

I decided to write a little of the different technologies with some pros and cons of each display. The last portion of the write up would contain my opinions on what might work for different situations and what might not and why.

The different technologies that I will try to cover will be:

1. Plasma Displays
2. CCFL/LED Backlit LCD Displays
3. LCD Front Projection
4. DLP Front Projection
5. LCOS Front Projection
6. Others (OLED etc)

I will not talk too much about Rear Projection DLP TVs as its not that readily available in Malaysia.

To start it off, there is no one perfect technology out there. Each and every technology has its strengths and weaknesses. Some of them are limitations of the particular technology and some might be the viewing environment issues. Depending on your situation and preference, some will work for you and some will put you off quite a bit.

Before going into details of each technology, lets discuss a little about CRT Technology.

CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube is actually a vacuum tube with an electron gun that is aimed at a phosphor based fluorescent screen. Colour CRTs had three guns (one each for red, green and blue) that would combine to give the image as it hits the phosphor coating on the screen.

For the longest time, CRT was deemed to be reference display that had very good blacks and excellent picture. The main problems with CRTs was they could not make them very large due to weight/bulky by nature and to get the convergence correct when they tubes and screens became bigger.

CRTs had excellent blacks but were limited in how bright they got and were always reflective as the glass in the front was a necessity.

There were actually HD ready CRTs I believe just that they never actually made it to our shores. I believe Sony made some reference sets.

Broadcast studios also used CRTs for a long time in mastering studios. Its now changing to LCDs and now recently some OLED reference broadcast monitors (small in size).

So with the quest to look for bigger displays other display technologies started coming up.

[anfieldude]

Plasma Displays

One of the technologies that were looked at for larger displays was plasma displays.

Plasma displays comprise of millions (depending on resolution) cells that hold noble gases and some mercury. As the cells are supplied a voltage, the gas in the cells form a plasma (or strike plasma). To make it simple, the electrons and the mercury in the cells hit the phosphor that is coated on the cells and the cells light up. Each pixel is divided into sub pixels (Red, Green Blue). The intensity of each pixel is controlled (thru Pulse Width Modulation) and with this the colours come to live (simplified....

The main advantage of the plasma display is the contrast ratio.

As each pixel is lit up individually, it is possible to get very good black levels. While its impossible to get total black as some amount of voltage is always (idle luminance) present to be able to fire up the pixels faster, the can get very very black. To get better blacks, the coating on the glass is improved to give the perception of even darker blacks.

The other advantage of this technology is, motion. As the on/off of the pixels are almost instant, motion is pretty smooth especially for fast moving motion

Among other high points are also wider viewing angles. As light is emitted directly by each pixel with no polarization, the viewing angle is almost 180^o

[anfieldude]

Reserved

[anfieldude]

Reserved

[anfieldude]

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[geforce]

Great staff. Will definitely use it as guide for my next purchase. Thanks anfieldude!