origin of lag in lcd displays factory

Display lag is a phenomenon associated with most types of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) like smartphones and computers and nearly all types of high-definition televisions (HDTVs). It refers to latency, or lag between when the signal is sent to the display and when the display starts to show that signal. This lag time has been measured as high as 68 ms,Hz display. Display lag is not to be confused with pixel response time, which is the amount of time it takes for a pixel to change from one brightness value to another. Currently the majority of manufacturers quote the pixel response time, but neglect to report display lag.

For older analog cathode ray tube (CRT) technology, display lag is nearly zero, due to the nature of the technology, which does not have the ability to store image data before display. The picture signal is minimally processed internally, simply for demodulation from a radio-frequency (RF) carrier wave (for televisions), and then splitting into separate signals for the red, green, and blue electron guns, and for the timing of the vertical and horizontal sync. Image adjustments typically involve reshaping the signal waveform but without storage, so the image is written to the screen as fast as it is received, with only nanoseconds of delay for the signal to traverse the wiring inside the device from input to the screen.

For modern digital signals, significant computer processing power and memory storage is needed to prepare an input signal for display. For either over-the-air or cable TV, the same analog demodulation techniques are used, but after that, then the signal is converted to digital data, which must be decompressed using the MPEG codec, and rendered into an image bitmap stored in a frame buffer.

For progressive scan display modes, the signal processing stops here, and the frame buffer is immediately written to the display device. In its simplest form, this processing may take several microseconds to occur.

For interlaced video, additional processing is frequently applied to deinterlace the image and make it seem to be clearer or more detailed than it actually is. This is done by storing several interlaced frames and then applying algorithms to determine areas of motion and stillness, and to either merge interlaced frames for smoothing or extrapolate where pixels are in motion, the resulting calculated frame buffer is then written to the display device.

De-interlacing imposes a delay that can be no shorter than the number of frames being stored for reference, plus an additional variable period for calculating the resulting extrapolated frame buffer; delays of 16-32ms are common.

While the pixel response time of the display is usually listed in the monitor"s specifications, no manufacturers advertise the display lag of their displays, likely because the trend has been to increase display lag as manufacturers find more ways to process input at the display level before it is shown. Possible culprits are the processing overhead of HDCP, Digital Rights Management (DRM), and also DSP techniques employed to reduce the effects of ghosting – and the cause may vary depending on the model of display. Investigations have been performed by several technology-related websites, some of which are listed at the bottom of this article.

LCD, plasma, and DLP displays, unlike CRTs, have a native resolution. That is, they have a fixed grid of pixels on the screen that show the image sharpest when running at the native resolution (so nothing has to be scaled full-size which blurs the image). In order to display non-native resolutions, such displays must use video scalers, which are built into most modern monitors. As an example, a display that has a native resolution of 1600x1200 being provided a signal of 640x480 must scale width and height by 2.5x to display the image provided by the computer on the native pixels. In order to do this, while producing as few artifacts as possible, advanced signal processing is required, which can be a source of introduced latency. Interlaced video signals such as 480i and 1080i require a deinterlacing step that adds lag. Anecdotallyprogressive scanning mode. External devices have also been shown to reduce overall latency by providing faster image-space resizing algorithms than those present in the LCD screen.

Many LCDs also use a technology called "overdrive" which buffers several frames ahead and processes the image to reduce blurring and streaks left by ghosting. The effect is that everything is displayed on the screen several frames after it was transmitted by the video source.

Display lag can be measured using a test device such as the Video Signal Input Lag Tester. Despite its name, the device cannot independently measure input lag. It can only measure input lag and response time together.

Lacking a measurement device, measurement can be performed using a test display (the display being measured), a control display (usually a CRT) that would ideally have negligible display lag, a computer capable of mirroring an output to the two displays, stopwatch software, and a high-speed camera pointed at the two displays running the stopwatch program. The lag time is measured by taking a photograph of the displays running the stopwatch software, then subtracting the two times on the displays in the photograph. This method only measures the difference in display lag between two displays and cannot determine the absolute display lag of a single display. CRTs are preferable to use as a control display because their display lag is typically negligible. However, video mirroring does not guarantee that the same image will be sent to each display at the same point in time.

In the past it was seen as common knowledge that the results of this test were exact as they seemed to be easily reproducible, even when the displays were plugged into different ports and different cards, which suggested that the effect is attributable to the display and not the computer system. An in depth analysis that has been released on the German website Prad.de revealed that these assumptions have been wrong. Averaging measurements as described above lead to comparable results because they include the same amount of systematic errors. As seen on different monitor reviews the so determined values for the display lag for the very same monitor model differ by margins up to 16 ms or even more.

To minimize the effects of asynchronous display outputs (the points of time an image is transferred to each monitor is different or the actual used frequency for each monitor is different) a highly specialized software application called SMTT

Several approaches to measure display lag have been restarted in slightly changed ways but still reintroduced old problems, that have already been solved by the former mentioned SMTT. One such method involves connecting a laptop to an HDTV through a composite connection and run a timecode that shows on the laptop"s screen and the HDTV simultaneously and recording both screens with a separate video recorder. When the video of both screens is paused, the difference in time shown on both displays have been interpreted as an estimation for the display lag.16 ms or even more.

Display lag contributes to the overall latency in the interface chain of the user"s inputs (mouse, keyboard, etc.) to the graphics card to the monitor. Depending on the monitor, display lag times between 10-68 ms have been measured. However, the effects of the delay on the user depend on each user"s own sensitivity to it.

Display lag is most noticeable in games (especially older video-game consoles), with different games affecting the perception of delay. For instance, in PvE, a slight input delay is not as critical compared to PvP, or to other games favoring quick reflexes like

If the game"s controller produces additional feedback (rumble, the Wii Remote"s speaker, etc.), then the display lag will cause this feedback to not accurately match up with the visuals on-screen, possibly causing extra disorientation (e.g. feeling the controller rumble a split second before a crash into a wall).

TV viewers can be affected as well. If a home theater receiver with external speakers is used, then the display lag causes the audio to be heard earlier than the picture is seen. "Early" audio is more jarring than "late" audio. Many home-theater receivers have a manual audio-delay adjustment which can be set to compensate for display latency.

Many televisions, scalers and other consumer-display devices now offer what is often called a "game mode" in which the extensive preprocessing responsible for additional lag is specifically sacrificed to decrease, but not eliminate, latency. While typically intended for videogame consoles, this feature is also useful for other interactive applications. Similar options have long been available on home audio hardware and modems for the same reason. Connection through VGA cable or component should eliminate perceivable input lag on many TVs even if they already have a game mode. Advanced post-processing is non existent on analog connection and the signal traverses without delay.

A television may have a picture mode that reduces display lag for computers. Some Samsung and LG televisions automatically reduce lag for a specific input port if the user renames the port to "PC".

LCD screens with a high response-time value often do not give satisfactory experience when viewing fast-moving images (they often leave streaks or blur; called ghosting). But an LCD screen with both high response time and significant display lag is unsuitable for playing fast-paced computer games or performing fast high-accuracy operations on the screen, due to the mouse cursor lagging behind.

One of the areas where the A-MVA panel does extremely well is in the areas of display lag and pixel response time. Just to recap, you may have heard complaints about "input lag" on various LCDs, so that"s one area we look at in our LCD reviews. We put input lag in quotation marks because while many people call it "input lag", the reality is that this lag occurs somewhere within the LCD panel circuitry, or perhaps even at the level of the liquid crystals. Where this lag occurs isn"t the concern; instead, we just want to measure the duration of the lag. That"s why we prefer to call it "processing lag" or "display lag".

To test for display lag, we run the Wings of Fury benchmark in 3DMark03, with the output set to the native LCD resolution - in this case 1920x1200. Our test system is a quad-core Q6600 running a Radeon HD 3870 on a Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 motherboard - we had to disable CrossFire support in order to output the content to both displays. We connect the test LCD and a reference LCD to two outputs from the Radeon 3870 and set the monitors to run in clone mode.

The reference Monitor is an HP LP3065, which we have found to be one of the best LCDs we currently possess in terms of not having display lag. (The lack of a built-in scaler probably has something to do with this.) While we know some of you would like us to compare performance to a CRT, that"s not something we have around our offices anymore. Instead, we are looking at relative performance, and it"s possible that the HP LP3065 has 20ms of lag compared to a good CRT - or maybe not. Either way, the relative lag is constant, so even if a CRT is faster at updating, we can at least see if an LCD is equal to or better than our reference display.

While the benchmark is looping, we snap a bunch of pictures of the two LCDs sitting side-by-side (using a relatively fast shutter speed). 3DMark03 shows the runtime with a resolution of 10ms at the bottom of the display, and we can use this to estimate whether a particular LCD has more or less processing lag than our reference LCD. We sort through the images and discard any where the times shown on the LCDs are not clearly legible, until we are left with 10 images for each test LCD. We record the difference in time relative to the HP LP3065 and average the 10 results to come up with an estimated processing lag value, with lower numbers being better. Negative numbers indicate a display is faster than the HP LP3065, while positive numbers mean the HP is faster and has less lag.

It"s important to note that this is merely an estimate - whatever the reference monitor happens to be, there are some inherent limitations. For one, LCDs only refresh their display 60 times per second, so we cannot specifically measure anything less than approximately 17ms with 100% accuracy. Second, the two LCDs can have mismatched vertical synchronizations, so it"s entirely possible to end up with a one frame difference on the time readout because of this. That"s why we average the results of 10 images, and we are confident that our test procedure can at least show when there is a consistent lag/internal processing delay. Here is a summary of our results for the displays we have tested so far.

As you can see, all of the S-PVA panels we have tested to date show a significant amount of input lag, ranging from 20ms up to 40ms. In contrast, the TN and S-IPS panels show little to no processing lag (relative to the HP LP3065). The BenQ FP241VW performs similarly to the TN and IPS panels, with an average display lag of 2ms - not something you would actually notice compared to other LCDs. Obviously, if you"re concerned with display lag at all, you"ll want to avoid S-PVA panels for the time being. That"s unfortunate, considering S-PVA panels perform very well in other areas.

Despite what the manufacturers might advertise as their average pixel response time, we found most of the LCDs are basically equal in this area - they all show roughly a one frame "lag", which equates to a response time of around 16ms. In our experience, processing lag is far more of a concern than pixel response times. Taking a closer look at just the FP241VW, we can see the typical one frame lag in terms of pixel response time. However, the panel does appear to be a little faster in response time than some of the other panels we"ve tested (notice how the "ghost image" isn"t as visible as on the HP LP3065), and we didn"t see parts of three frames in any of the test images.

After the initial article went live, one of our readers who works in the display industry sent me an email. He provides some interesting information about the causes of image lag. Below is an (edited) excerpt from his email. (He wished to remain anonymous.)

PVA and MVA have inherent drawbacks with respect to LCD response time, especially gray-to-gray. To address this shortcoming, companies have invested in ASICs that perform a trick generically referred to as "overshoot." The liquid crystal (LC) material in *VA responds sluggishly to small voltage changes (a change from one gray level to another). To fix this, the ASIC does some image processing and basically applies an overvoltage to the electrodes of the affected pixel to spur the LC material into rapid movement. Eventually the correct settling voltage is applied to hold the pixel at the required level matching the input drive level.

It"s very complicated math taking place in the ASIC in real time. It works well but with an important caveat: it requires a frame buffer. What this means is that as video comes into the panel, there is a memory device that can capture one whole video frame and hold it. After comparing it to the next incoming frame, the required overshoot calculations are made. Only then is the first captured frame released to the panel"s timing controller, which is when the frame is rendered to the screen. As you may have already guessed, that causes at least one frame time worth of lag (17ms).

Some companies discovered some unintended artifacts in their overshoot calculations and the only way they saw to correct these was to allow for their algorithm to look ahead by two frames instead of one. So they had to up the memory of the frame buffer and now they started capturing and holding not one but two frames upon which they make their complex overshoot predictions to apply the corrected pixel drive levels and reduce gray-to-gray response time (at the expense of lag time). Again, it works very well for improving response time, but at the expense of causing lag, which gamers hate. That in a nutshell is the basis of around 33ms of the lag measured with S-PVA.

Not every display uses this approach, but this could account for the increase in display lag between earlier S-PVA and later S-PVA panels. It"s also important to note that I tested the Dell 2408WFP revision A00, and apparently revision A01 does not have as much lag. I have not been able to confirm this personally, however. The above also suggest that displays designed to provide a higher image quality through various signal processing techniques could end up with more display lag caused by the microchip and microcode, which makes sense. Now all we need are better algorithms and technologies in order to reduce the need for all of this extra image processing -- or as we have seen with some displays (particularly HDTVs), the ability to disable the image processing.

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When you"re using a monitor, you want your actions to appear on the screen almost instantly, whether you"re typing, clicking through websites, or gaming. If you have high input lag, you"ll notice a delay from the time you type something on your keyboard or when you move your mouse to when it appears on the screen, and this can make the monitor almost unusable.

For gamers, low input lag is even more important because it can be the difference between winning and losing in games. A monitor"s input lag isn"t the only factor in the total amount of input lag because there"s also delay caused by your keyboard/mouse, PC, and internet connection. However, having a monitor with low input lag is one of the first steps in ensuring you get a responsive gaming experience.

Any monitor adds at least a few milliseconds of input lag, but most of the time, it"s small enough that you won"t notice it at all. There are some cases where the input lag increases so much to the point where it becomes noticeable, but that"s very rare and may not necessarily only be caused by the monitor. Your peripherals, like keyboards and mice, add more latency than the monitor, so if you notice any delay, it"s likely because of those and not your screen.

There"s no definitive amount of input lag when people will start noticing it because everyone is different. A good estimate of around 30 ms is when it starts to become noticeable, but even a delay of 20 ms can be problematic for reaction-based games. You can try this tool that adds lag to simulate the difference between high and low input lag. You can use it to estimate how much input lag bothers you, but keep in mind this tool is relative and adds lag to the latency you already have.

There are three main reasons why there"s input lag during computer use, and it isn"t just the monitor that has input lag. There"s the acquisition of the image, the processing, and finally actually displaying it.

The acquisition of the image has to do with the source and not with the monitor. The more time it takes for the monitor to receive the source image, the more input lag there"ll be. This has never really been an issue with PCs since previous analog signals were virtually instant, and current digital interfaces like DisplayPort and HDMI have next to no inherent latency. However, some devices like wireless mice or keyboards may add delay. Bluetooth connections especially add latency, so if you want the lowest latency possible in the video acquisition phase, you should use a wired mouse or keyboard or get something wireless with very low latency.

Once the image is in a format that the video"s processor understands, it will apply at least some processing to alter the image somehow. A few examples:

The time this step takes is affected by the speed of the video processor and the total amount of processing. Although you can"t control the processor speed, you can control how many operations it needs to do by enabling and disabling settings. Most picture settings won"t affect the input lag, and monitors rarely have any image processing, which is why the input lag on monitors tends to be lower than on TVs. One of these settings that could add delay is variable refresh rate, but most modern monitors are good enough that the lag doesn"t increase much.

Once the monitor has processed the image, it"s ready to be displayed on the screen. This is the step where the video processor sends the image to the screen. The screen can"t change its state instantly, and there"s a slight delay from when the image is done processing to when it appears on screen. Our input lag measurements consider when the image first appears on the screen and not the time it takes for the image to fully appear (which has to do with our Response Time measurements). Overall, the time it takes to display the image has a big impact on the total input lag.

Dell recommends ensuring that the device drivers and BIOS are up to date using the SupportAssist application for optimal video performance and to help resolve common video-related issues.

NOTE: When SupportAssist does not show up in the search results, go to the SupportAssist for PCs and tablets page for information about downloading and installing SupportAssist.

To learn how to manually download and install a device driver such as Chipset, Video card (GPU), and Monitor driver (if required, most monitor drivers are delivered automatically through Windows Update) on your Dell computer, see the Dell knowledge base article How to Download and Install Dell Drivers.

We must verify whether the problem is the display screen of the laptop, video card (GPU), or video settings on the computer. A straightforward way to identify this is to connect the laptop to an external monitor or TV.

If the issue persists on the external monitor, it may be an issue with the video card (GPU) or video settings and not the laptop LCD panel. Go to verify display or video issues in Windows Safe Mode. Otherwise, go to the next step.

Performance issues may occur if there is any damage to the LCD screen. The display may stop working, work intermittently, flicker, display horizontal or vertical lines, and so on, if there is damage to the display screen.

If you notice a physical damage, contact Dell Technical Support to learn more about repair options that are available in your region. If there is no damage, go to the next step.

Dell laptops have integrated diagnostic tools that can determine if the screen abnormality is an inherent problem with the LCD screen of the Dell laptop or with the video card (GPU) and computer settings.

When you notice screen abnormalities like flickering, distortion, clarity issues, fuzzy or blurry images, horizontal or vertical lines, color fade, running a diagnostic test on the LCD helps identify if the issue is with the LCD panel.

Press and hold the D key and turn on the computer to enter the LCD built-in self-test (BIST) mode. Continue to hold the D key until you see the entire screen change colors.

If you do not detect any screen abnormalities in the integrated self-test mode, the LCD panel of the laptop is functioning properly. Go to the Update the video card (GPU) driver, monitor driver, and BIOS section.

If you notice any abnormalities in the LCD built-in self-test mode, contact Dell Technical Support to learn more about repair options that are available in your region.

Windows Safe Mode does not load any drivers, startup applications, third-party services. This will help us identify if the issue is related to the operating system, video settings, device drivers, or third-party software. To learn how to boot your computer into Safe Mode, see the Dell knowledge base article below based on the operating system that is installed on the computer:

Windows updates can support your Windows operating system in many ways. Windows updates can solve specific problems, provide security patches and protection from malicious attacks, or even add new features to the operating system.

Display settings like brightness, refresh rate, resolution, and power management may affect the performance of the LCD screen on your Dell laptop. Changing or adjusting the display settings can help resolve several types of video issues.

NOTE: Depending on the model of the Dell laptop, the shortcut keys to adjust or change the brightness may differ. See the User Guide or User Manual of your Dell laptop for model-specific information.

If you find that the Dell laptop is unresponsive to touch, touch stops working entirely, or other touch-related issues, you can try some common troubleshooting steps to help fix the touch-related issue.

Stress Test can thoroughly diagnose the video card (GPU) on your computer and report any potential hardware problem. Running a stress test on your computer can verify if the hardware components are stable and thus reliable.

System Restore is an integrated Windows tool that is designed to protect and repair the operating system. When something goes wrong with your computer, System Restore must be used before you try to restore the operating system to factory default settings.

If the diagnostic tests on the LCD panel and the video card (GPU) passed, it is most definitely an issue that is related to software that is installed on the computer. If the above troubleshooting steps did not resolve the issue, you may try to restore the computer to factory default settings as a last resort.

WARNING: Restoring or resetting the computer to factory default settings will erase all personal data on the computer. Back up all important data like documents, images, music files, spreadsheets, videos to an external hard drive or a cloud-based backup like Microsoft OneDrive.

Dell computers are built with a small amount of hard disk space that is reserved for reinstalling the operating system. This method is the easiest way to restore the computer to factory condition. The restoration process deletes all user data from the computer, so be sure to back up all your files before starting this process.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - A joint venture between Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, known as Foxconn, and Sharp Corpplans to build a 61 billion yuan ($8.8 billion) factory in China to produce liquid-crystal displays (LCDs).

Sakai Display Products Corp’s plant will be a so-called Gen-10.5 facility specializing in large-screen LCDs and will be operational by 2019, the company said at a signing event with local officials in Guangzhou on Friday. It said the plant will have capacity equating to 92 billion yuan a year.

Global LCD output was hit this year by the closure of a Samsungfactory that accounted for 3 percent of the market, as well as factory stoppages in Taiwan after an earthquake in March.

China’s largest LCD panel maker, BOE Technology Group, began construction on its own Gen-10.5 plant in Hefei in December last year, with production scheduled to begin in 2018.

In May Shenzhen China Optoelectronics Technology Co, asubsidiary of TCL Corp, announced that it would begin construction on a 50 billion yuan LCD plant in Shenzhen.

Sakai Display Products Corp’s plans for the Guangzhou plant come as Hon Hai seeks to turn the joint venture into a subsidiary, investing a total of 15.1 billion yuan in the company.

The venture will also sell 436,000 shares for 17.1 billion yuan to an investment co-owned by Hon Hai Chairman Terry Gou, giving Hon Hai a 53 percent interest in the business and lowering Sharp’s stake from to 26 percent from 40 percent.

If the screen flickers, make sure the display settings in Windows match the native resolution and refresh rate for the display. Find the native resolution of a flat panel display on the box, in the specifications, or in the printed material that came with the display. Some common native resolutions are 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1920 x 1200, and 1680 x 1050. The most common refresh rate for LCD displays is 60 Hz. This normally cannot be changed for flat panel displays using Plug and Play settings. However, if you are using special video software to increase or decrease the refresh rate, change the refresh rate to match the default refresh rate specification of the display.

If your screen flickers in Windows 10, it is usually caused by incompatible apps or display drivers. To find out whether an app or driver is causing the problem, check to see if Task Manager flickers. Then, based on that information, you"ll need to either uninstall the app or update the display driver.

Otherwise, you can get the latest updated video drivers from the video hardware manufacturer"s website. The following list shows some of the video hardware websites:

If you cannot select the native resolution after updating the video drivers, the graphics adapter in the computer might not support that resolution and might need to be upgraded.

Check the video cable connections. Unplug the cable and inspect the cable for damage. If the cable is damaged, replace it with a new cable. Try to use cables less than 3 meters (10 feet).

Check the environment around the display. Displays are sensitive to magnetic fields. Speakers, florescent lights, fans, cell phones, radios, and any other electrical device can cause flickering. Temporarily move electrical items away from the display to see if they is producing a field that causes the flicker.

To see if the video coming from the computer is causing the problem, temporarily connect the display to another computer, such as a notebook computer.

TAIPEI, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Innolux Display Corp., the world"s No. 2 LCD monitor maker, said on Monday it expects to ship about 50 percent more monitors this year due to steady global demand and the addition of a large new customer in Taiwan.

Unlike bigger pure-panel rivals in Taiwan, Innolux is the only local LCD screen maker that assembles LCD monitors for top PC vendors, including Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co.and Acer Inc..

Innolux, which trails only TPV Technology Ltd., the world"s biggest computer monitor maker, will add BenQ Corp.to its customer list this year, Chief Financial Officer Thomas Hsu told Reuters. "There has been 10-15 percent growth every year. It"s a stable market," Hsu said in a telephone interview, referring to growth of the global LCD monitor market.

Although he declined to disclose details of its arrangement with BenQ, Hsu said the four-year-old Innolux aims to ship 25 million LCD monitors in 2007, up from 17 million units shipped last year.

Its annual output of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) mainly for 17-, 19- and 22-inch monitors would grow by about a fifth to 11 million units this year, he added.

Innolux will buy the rest of the panels for its LCD monitors from bigger rivals such as AU Optronics Corp.in Taiwan and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.of South Korean.

Analysts agree with Innolux executives who say its unique business model is less vulnerable to cyclical downturns that typically cause stockpiles and hurt screen prices and profits.

“Our strategy is to maintain that half (of total panels) is made by ourselves and the other half is from outside,” Hsu said. “No matter if it’s a slow or peak season, our panel plant is running at 100 percent.”

To tap the fast-growing flat-screen TV market, Hsu added that Innolux plans to invest between T$80 billion ($2.42 billion) to T$90 billion to build a new LCD plant, using advanced technology to make bigger panels for TVs. But there is no firm timetable.

Before Monday"s pullback, the stock had jumped 53 percent since its debut in late October, far outpacing AU"s 4.5 percent gain and the main TAIEX index"s11 percent rise during the same period.

Innolux is on the radar screens of many foreign brokerages -- Merrill Lynch initiated its coverage on Innolux with a “buy” rating last week, giving a 12-month target price of T$101.0.

Innolux gave no financial forecasts. Analysts expect the firm to earn a net profit of T$8.01 billion in 2007, more than tripling from last year, according to Reuters Estimates. The profit will grow further to T$12.42 billion in 2008.

“Of course, there are risks. We have a deep relation with the PC industry and it would have an impact on us when the PC industry is doing well or not well,” Hsu said.

((Reporting by Baker Li, editing by Ken Wills; baker.li@reuters.com; Reuters Messaging: baker.li.reuters.com@reuters.net; +886 2 2508-0815)) Keywords: INNOLUX SHIPMENTS/

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A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directlybacklight or reflector to produce images in color or monochrome.seven-segment displays, as in a digital clock, are all good examples of devices with these displays. They use the same basic technology, except that arbitrary images are made from a matrix of small pixels, while other displays have larger elements. LCDs can either be normally on (positive) or off (negative), depending on the polarizer arrangement. For example, a character positive LCD with a backlight will have black lettering on a background that is the color of the backlight, and a character negative LCD will have a black background with the letters being of the same color as the backlight. Optical filters are added to white on blue LCDs to give them their characteristic appearance.

Glass substrate with ITO electrodes. The shapes of these electrodes will determine the shapes that will appear when the LCD is switched ON. Vertical ridges etched on the surface are smooth.

LCDs are used in a wide range of applications, including LCD televisions, computer monitors, instrument panels, aircraft cockpit displays, and indoor and outdoor signage. Small LCD screens are common in LCD projectors and portable consumer devices such as digital cameras, watches, digital clocks, calculators, and mobile telephones, including smartphones. LCD screens are also used on consumer electronics products such as DVD players, video game devices and clocks. LCD screens have replaced heavy, bulky cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays in nearly all applications. LCD screens are available in a wider range of screen sizes than CRT and plasma displays, with LCD screens available in sizes ranging from tiny digital watches to very large television receivers. LCDs are slowly being replaced by OLEDs, which can be easily made into different shapes, and have a lower response time, wider color gamut, virtually infinite color contrast and viewing angles, lower weight for a given display size and a slimmer profile (because OLEDs use a single glass or plastic panel whereas LCDs use two glass panels; the thickness of the panels increases with size but the increase is more noticeable on LCDs) and potentially lower power consumption (as the display is only "on" where needed and there is no backlight). OLEDs, however, are more expensive for a given display size due to the very expensive electroluminescent materials or phosphors that they use. Also due to the use of phosphors, OLEDs suffer from screen burn-in and there is currently no way to recycle OLED displays, whereas LCD panels can be recycled, although the technology required to recycle LCDs is not yet widespread. Attempts to maintain the competitiveness of LCDs are quantum dot displays, marketed as SUHD, QLED or Triluminos, which are displays with blue LED backlighting and a Quantum-dot enhancement film (QDEF) that converts part of the blue light into red and green, offering similar performance to an OLED display at a lower price, but the quantum dot layer that gives these displays their characteristics can not yet be recycled.

Since LCD screens do not use phosphors, they rarely suffer image burn-in when a static image is displayed on a screen for a long time, e.g., the table frame for an airline flight schedule on an indoor sign. LCDs are, however, susceptible to image persistence.battery-powered electronic equipment more efficiently than a CRT can be. By 2008, annual sales of televisions with LCD screens exceeded sales of CRT units worldwide, and the CRT became obsolete for most purposes.

The Dell Alienware AW3423DW is a 34-inch 3440 x 1440 OLED monitor with a 175 Hz maximum refresh rate. This is the first time we"ve seen an OLED panel with this kind of specs, and the first time OLED has reached such a refresh rate in a reasonable monitor size. It uses one of Samsung"s latest QD-OLED panels, which are different to other panels we"ve seen before, with a promise of improvements in brightness, efficiency and burn-in.

Fundamentally, the AW3423DW uses the same kind of self-lit organic LED pixels as we"ve seen from other OLED displays, meaning there is no backlight required. As you can expect, the AW3423DW is fully geared towards gaming, and more specifically HDR gaming. It packs Nvidia"s G-Sync Ultimate hardware module, though to be clear this monitor works with all GPUs including AMD"s, even for adaptive sync.

It also arrives certified for VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400, which unlike the regular DisplayHDR 400 certification, isn"t complete junk. Using OLED means we get true HDR hardware, and Dell is claiming up to 1000 nits of peak brightness with a 0.1ms grey to grey response time. It"s also a curved monitor with a 1800R curvature. That"s pretty standard for ultrawide monitors and it feels just right for gaming.

Despite having the hardware to destroy much more expensive products and is one of the only gaming-suitable OLED monitors you can buy, the Alienware AW3423DW arrives with a competitive price point of $1,300. As far as high-end displays go, this is significantly less expensive than other true HDR products like the Asus ROG PG32UQX, which still costs a hefty $3,000.

The overall build quality of this Alienware monitor is quite impressive. It"s quite a large display, not just in terms of the screen size, but its general housing. It"s a fat monitor in the middle to house all the associated G-Sync hardware, plus it"s curved, and it comes with a large, strong stand. While a lot of the outer materials are plastic, it"s a well built product that feels premium with tight seams and attention to detail.

The front of the monitor is largely black, so black bezels and black plastic, but the rear is mostly white. It"s kind of this unusual two-tone setup, but it works. It somehow feels both gamer to a small degree but also clean and minimalist. There"s also an RGB LED lighting setup around the central stand pillar which gets quite bright, as well as an illuminated alien logo.

No complaints regarding the stand assembly which is strong, supports height adjustment, and can also be tilted and swivelled. You can also swap out the stand for a VESA mounting adapter if you want to.

There are good and bad aspects to the port selection. We get one DisplayPort, two HDMI and a four port USB hub including two USB ports in an easy to access location on the bottom edge of the monitor. The DisplayPort 1.4 port is capable of up to 175 Hz refresh rates which is good, but you can"t use 10-bit and 175Hz at the same time, you"re limited to 8-bit, while for 10-bit you"ll need to drop the refresh rate to 144Hz. We don"t find this a huge issue as the difference between true 10-bit and 8-bit + dithering (used in the HDR mode) is negligible.

However, the more pressing issue is the lack of HDMI 2.1. Nvidia has not updated their G-Sync module to support HDMI 2.1 yet, which is why it"s not included. HDMI 2.0 limits the display to just 100 Hz which is rather pathetic for a 175 Hz monitor. That"s not as big of a deal on a 4K display you might want to use with a game console -- today"s consoles don"t support 3440 x 1440 very well -- but still a poor omission on a high-end product.

As for the OSD, it"s easy to navigate thanks to a directional toggle, and includes all the usual color and game features. One thing you don"t get here are cheat crosshairs (they"d likely burn-in on an OLED monitor), but there are black boosting modes and so on.

So far, so good. But now let"s talk about two issues with the AW3423DW. The first is the fan noise. This display, mostly due to the G-Sync module, requires active cooling. The built-in fan runs all the time, and it"s audible in a quiet room. You won"t hear it while gaming, but for quiet desktop use, I could hear it over my PC"s (admittedly near-silent) fans. It also seems to vary its speed at times, giving you periods of louder and quieter fan noise. In our opinion, monitors should be silent, either fully passively cooled or with a fan so quiet it"s irrelevant. That"s not the case of the Alienware, which is a shame.

The second issue, and this is arguably the bigger of the two, is the display"s coating. Actually, it"s likely a combination of the coating and the polarization layers, or lack thereof. The AW3423DW reflects a lot of ambient light. And it"s quite an unusual sort of reflection, let me elaborate...

The vast majority of the monitors we"ve tested fall into one of two categories. Most use a standard matte anti-glare finish. This prevents mirror-like reflections, but does lead to diffuse reflection of ambient lighting, usually restricted to specific areas on the display. Other monitors use a gloss finish, like the LG C1 OLED, which limits a heap of ambient light reflection, but can cause mirror-like reflections for objects directly behind the display. There are pros and cons to each approach depending on the setup and brightness of the display.

The AW3423DW uses what Dell describes as an anti-reflective coating, but how I would describe it is combining the worst aspects to matte and gloss finishes. Amazingly, the coating is able to both reflect heaps of ambient light, and also provide some mirror-like reflections. This becomes most apparent when viewing darker content – bright scenes are bright enough to cut through the reflections – and is especially problematic in brighter viewing environments.

Basically, when viewing the screen in standard indoor lighting, blacks will appear grey. And this isn"t due to the monitor showing the wrong color, it"s due to the display reflecting ambient light back at you in sort of a dull grey appearance. This is obvious even when the monitor is off, and it appears the QD-OLED screen completely lacks a polarization layer which is usually used to cut down on reflections. So if you buy this monitor and wonder "how come the screen looks a bit grey," this is the reason.

How this affects the viewing experience will depend greatly on your environment, but when there is enough ambient light, you"ll see greyish blacks. And that"s a problem, because one of the main benefits to using an OLED is its deep blacks – the pixels are off after all. But in bright usage conditions, the black level of this QD-OLED visually appeared no better than an IPS with a 1000:1 contrast ratio. It"s only when dimming the lights does the OLED start to separate itself from a regular LCD, and when using it in a mostly dark environment, that"s where it shines and you get the full benefit of the OLED panel. And yes, this is quite a bit different to how LG"s OLED TVs fare in brighter conditions, where even in my bright office the black levels appeared significantly deeper than any LCD -- LG actually does a great job of ambient light reflection.

To be clear, this doesn"t mean the AW3423DW is useless in bright ambient lighting. In most instances you"ll see a similar experience to an LCD, perhaps with the occasional visible mirror reflection. You just won"t get a typical OLED experience though, like you do from monitors that include appropriate polarization. This leads us to conclude that is display is meant for people that often use their monitor in dim conditions, especially at night, or are willing to adjust their lighting setup to minimize ambient light. It does look stunning with the lights turned down.

While we"re on the topic of issues, let"s get another one out the way, which is specific to the new QD-OLED panel, and that"s the subpixel structure. We"ve talked in the past about BGR subpixel layouts vs the regular RGB layout and how this affects image quality. Something similar occurs with the AW3423DW as the subpixel layout is using triangle RGB: green on top, with red and blue on the bottom. As this differs from the standard RGB stripe which operating systems and rendering tools are built around, it causes subpixel rendering issues.

The most obvious effect this causes is fringing on high contrast edges, think the edges of windows or text. Depending on the orientation of the edge, you might see fringing that"s any of red, green or blue. And because Windows ClearType utility doesn"t have built-in corrections for this, it"s not easily fixable, unlike with a BGR layout. Due to this, the triangle RGB layout is actually worse than BGR for clarity and artifacts. To me it looks somewhat similar to running a monitor with chroma subsampling enabled.

We"ve seen various opinions as to how noticeable these fringing artifacts are, with some saying they don"t notice them at all. Personally, I find it quite easy to notice when using desktop apps, such as when web browsing, even at viewing distances of a meter or more (I typically sit closer). It"s especially obvious next to a normal RGB stripe LCD, which may be the case if you plan on using the AW3423DW next to a second, LCD-based display. The drop in clarity moving from the IPS LCD I use every day to the QD-OLED was noticeable.

While this makes the AW3423DW less ideal for regular desktop use, the good news is that it"s not noticeable at all for content consumption. For gaming or watching videos, we couldn"t notice any fringing issues, and that"s coming from someone that found it obvious on the desktop. We"d have no problems whatsoever using this for gaming and if that"s your primary use case, it"s a non issue, don"t worry about it.

Finally, it"s also worth talking about the remaining OLED related concern which is burn-in. There has been talk that QD-OLED is less susceptible to burn-in than other OLED technologies, allegedly due to cutting out the reliance on color filters, improving efficiency, so the pixels don"t need to work as hard to display a given brightness.

At this stage, it"s an unproven claim as the technology is far too new for anyone to have run a comprehensive burn-in test. And we should be clear that even if QD-OLED is less susceptible than other OLEDs, it"s still susceptible, there is definitely a burn-in risk that you should be aware of.

How likely is burn-in? That"s hard to estimated and will depend on your usage. The AW3423DW does have burn-in mitigation features, including a pixel refresher that automatically runs when the display is put into standby, and pixel shifting. The panel actually appears to be overprovisioned, so the real resolution is slightly higher than 3440 x 1440, and the image then shifts around slightly during usage. These automatic features should help with burn-in, and Dell is also providing a 3-year replacement warranty that includes OLED burn-in, which should give you some peace of mind.

However, when spending over $1,000 on a monitor, ideally I want it to last for more than 3 years. I think 5 years at a minimum is reasonable, so how the QD-OLED goes in years 4 and 5 is unknown. That"s a factor you need to weigh up. Personally, I"d also recommend burn-in prevention strategies, like hiding your Windows taskbar and avoiding long periods of static usage where possible. But for regular content consumption and gaming it should be a non issue.

Let"s talk motion performance now. This in an OLED is very straightforward: no overdrive settings to worry about. The performance at 175 Hz is excellent, with response times in the 1.5ms range using our stringent test methodology. A tiny minority of transitions had a few overshoot concerns but nothing to be worried about, and of course cumulative deviation results were excellent as well, due to the extreme speed on offer with OLED.

For adaptive sync gamers, more good news as the performance across the refresh rate range is highly consistent, in fact, there was virtually no change when moving down to lower refresh rates, including 60Hz. What this means is you get an optimized, consistent experience regardless of the refresh rate you are using. This is a simple, easy case of a single overdrive mode experience and of course, we also get 100% refresh compliance at every refresh rate which is a testament to OLED technology.

Compared to other displays, the Alienware AW3423DW offers elite speed, equivalent to other OLEDs we"ve tested at the maximum refresh rate. This display is almost twice as fast as the Odyssey Neo G9 in terms of best response times, however the QD-OLED also has the benefit of virtually zero overshoot, whereas around 30% of the Neo G9"s transitions show some form of inverse ghosting using optimal settings. And that"s just a comparison between QD-OLED and Samsung VA. A typical high-end IPS like the LG 34GN850 is 4x slower and when we start getting to budget VA panels, it"s an order of magnitude difference between the two.

Typical LCD monitors tend to perform worse at lower refresh rates compared to what they achieve at high refresh rates, but that"s not the case with OLED. Average performance remains extremely consistent, while LCDs move back a touch. But the general placement remains the same, and it"s still true that getting the AW3423DW will give you an experience that is more than twice as fast as its competitors, if not significantly more.

The cumulative deviation numbers are perhaps the most interesting. Despite the QD-OLED response time numbers being equivalent to what we see from LG WOLED panels such as the LG C1 and Gigabyte FO48U, the QD-OLED panel ends up behind in cumulative deviation. This is because the response curves are different. WOLED has a quicker initial response in the first half of the transition, which accounts for most of this difference. But regardless of which OLED tech you get, the results are significantly superior to anything LCD based.

The AW3423DW is 2.5x better than its nearest VA LCD competitor, and 4x better than today"s fast IPS monitors. That"s a huge difference that results in a significantly clearer image at the same refresh rate, with no ghost trails or inverse ghost trails to speak of. The difference compared to VA LCDs we typically see in today"s ultrawides is huge and the difference side-by-side is immediately obvious.

As this monitor is not using VA technology, there are no dark level performance issues. Performance is consistent across all transitions we measured, and this leads to excellent results for dark performance, especially compared to some VA monitors.

Just briefly, here are the results comparing every monitor at a fixed 120Hz refresh rate. OLED displays are a class above and give much better motion clarity. Meanwhile, at 60Hz the same thing is true, although here the refresh rate is slow enough that most displays will be blurry to some degree, as all use sample and hold technology.

What we found a little puzzling with the AW3423DW was the high level of input latency, in terms of processing delay. Seeing the monitor take nearly 5ms to process is unusual, and while total input latency is okay thanks to a fast refresh rate and lightning fast response times, I think some optimization could be done here to reduce the processing lag.

Another contentious issue is power consumption. OLEDs are power hungry, especially when viewing full white images, which is the worst case scenario for an OLED. Displaying white uses around 2.5x more power than a traditional LCD, although at least the AW3423DW can actually display 200 nits, unlike the FO48U and C1.

However, it"s not typical to see 100W of power consumption during everyday use, especially while gaming. During typical usage the monitor hovered between 40 and 60 watts of usage, even during HDR gaming. This is still higher than an LCD, but not to a ridiculous degree. A significant chunk of this power consumption is actually not related to the panel, as we recorded over 30 watts of consumption even with the display fully switched off showing a black image.

Unfortunately, the AW3423DW does not support backlight strobing. OLED is well suited to strobing from a response time perspective, we should be able to achieve very clear images. However the major issue is panel brightness. The AW3423DW is not a very bright monitor, and enabling strobing would see that cut down further. We suspect that"s the reason the feature isn"t supported.

The Alienware AW3423DW has a very wide color gamut, particularly for P3 coverage, hitting 99.3% which is the highest we"ve seen. It also extends somewhat into the green range, giving us a decent 97% coverage for Adobe RGB. All up, this equates to 80% Rec. 2020 coverage, giving us great coverage of multiple gamuts.

Factory calibration leaves a bit to be desired, especially for grayscale. The main issue is gamma performance. What this display produces is very wonky, the gamma is too low in the lower range and too high in the upper range, leading to deltaE issues. CCT performance is very solid with no real color tint, but gamma issues do affect image quality.

It"s also frustrating that gamma performance changes depending on the brightness level, which we think is mostly a tuning issue. The results you see here are captured at 200 nits. On top of this, Dell doesn"t implement an sRGB clamp by default, so regular images are oversaturated in its factory configuration.

Relative to other monitors, grayscale performance isn"t the worst thanks to strong CCT performance, but could have been elite with some attention to gamma. As expected ColorChecker calibration puts it in the lower part of the table due to saturation issues.

Luckily for buyers, there is an easy way to improve accuracy by using the built-in sRGB mode. With this mode, many of the other settings are disabled, but the mode itself is functional and does a good job of emulating the sRGB color gamut. It doesn"t do anything to solve the gamma issues though, so you"re stuck with that unless you perform a full calibration.

We did calibrate this monitor fully and the results are decent. Correcting this gamma curve requires a larger than normal amount of work, so there can be banding visible in some gradients relative to monitors that handle gamma better from the factory. But aside from this, calibrated performance can be decently accurate especially for sRGB and P3 work.

As far as SDR brightness goes, the AW3423DW is significantly better than other OLED displays we"ve measured, which are flat out hitting even 150 nits. This Alienware display remains relatively poor for peak brightness, but 240 nits is much better than the LG C1 and very usable in some indoor conditions, provided it"s not too bright.

The AW3423DW also benefits from not having an automatic brightness limiter for SDR usage, so as you resize windows you don"t get huge changes in brightness like you get with LG WOLED screens. We always found the brightness limiter to annoying and distracting, but that"s not a concern with the AW3423DW, which hugely improves its usability as a desktop monitor. Minimum brightness gets down to 23 nits which is great for users in dark rooms.

As for contrast, all OLEDs are self-lit, there"s no backlight, so when displaying black each pixel can fully switch off. This leads to an effectively infinite contrast ratio, though for this review we"ll show black level instead. This is mostly just to illustrate how other display technologies compare, you"ll see that even though VA LCDs can get reasonably dark, they still have a way to go to reach the 0 black levels we see from OLED.

We were impressed with the viewing angles of the QD-OLED panel, which are elite and surprisingly good for a curved display. This is several levels above what we see from curved VA screens, which can have issues when viewed not in the correct position. There"s also no IPS glow, as of course this isn"t an IPS display.

Uniformity is also excellent. And no, this is not a golden sample since we bought this from Dell"s website as any customer would. The color tint was very uniform across the entire panel which can be an issue with some self-lit panels, and the brightness deviations were minimal. This display looks very even when using it which is great to see.

One of key selling point of OLED displays is HDR performance, which is leagues ahead of the majority of LCD monitors that advertise HDR functionality. Unlike those LCDs, OLEDs have true HDR hardware capabilities, which leads to a night and day difference in terms of real world HDR image quality. Seriously, the difference is so vast between an OLED for HDR, and a DisplayHDR 400 LCD monitor for HDR, that you"d think the LCD monitor was completely broken.

The main advantage OLEDs have is they are self-lit. This means each pixel can individually illuminate itself for perfect HDR image quality. LCDs have to rely on a backlight to function, and most true HDR LCDs then use dimming zones to achieve the high levels of contrast required for HDR. Even good full array locally dimmed LCDs with 1000+ zones pale in comparison to the effective 5 million zones the AW3423DW provides.

The true image quality advantage will vary depending on the content, but OLEDs simply do not suffer from blooming or haloing around bright objects, which you can get on a mini-LED LCD, especially if the zone count is insufficient.

There are good HDR LCDs out there, but even the best struggle with fine HDR details like starfields or Christmas lights, and the worst panels with only a few zones look downright terrible. No such issues with an OLED panel like this, which looks brilliant in all conditions. Side by side comparisons really show the difference in these tricky scenes.

Like with SDR performance, HDR on the AW3423DW also has an effectively infinite contrast ratio. The best we"ve seen from an LCD based display is close to 14,000:1 in the punishing checkerboard test, and about 13,000:1 in our worst case single frame contrast test. Basically, the AW3423DW can get darker and display richer shadows in tricky scenes where bright and dark areas are on screen close together at the same time.

The trade-off with an OLED is always brightness. OLEDs are great at shadow detail but poor for bright highlights, while the reverse is true for an LCD-based HDR display. The AW3423DW has two HDR modes that vary the brightness depending on the setting. In the HDR 400 True Black mode, peak brightness tops out around 460 nits for small elements, and 280 nits for full screen elements, with no difference between peak and sustained brightness. In the HDR 1000 mode, peak brightness now reaches as high as 1020 nits, however full screen brightness drops slightly to 260 nits.

When we compare these settings to an LG C1 OLED, there are some clear differences. The Alienware has higher peak brightness, but this is only true for very small elements. At a 5% window size, the AW3423DW drops to 770 nits, which is typically what the C1 can also do. However, the C1 is better at sustaining this brightness for larger elements, providing 770 nits at 10% and 390 nits at 25%. The Alienware is actually dimmer in these conditions, at just 464 nits at 10% and 365 nits at 25%. But lower than this, the Alienware regains its lead with superior brightness for full screen images.

Neither of these displays holds a candle to the Asus PG32UQX, which is a mini-LED LCD with 1152 local dimming zones. This display powers along at 1700 nits right through to 10%, and only dips to 1200 nits at full screen window sizes. This gives the best LCD-based HDR gaming monitor a big lead for brightness, at the cost of black levels, blooming and tightness of dimming. However, the peak brightness of the Alienware is still great for HDR playback, and real scene brightness can be impressive, I measured easily over 800 nits for bright highlights in several scenes I tested, with real scene brightness above 1000 nits possible at times.

Despite this, in comparison charts, OLED panels do fare poorly in brightness. Full screen sustained brightness is low relative to the best LCDs, and flash brightness isn"t any better as OLEDs typically have no difference between sustained and peak brightness. The quick fall-off for brightness also sees the AW3423DW end up last for 10% brightness, I"d really like to see this be up over 600 nits, even if at times you get 800 nits plus for small bright elements