mainstream lcd displays in stock

First, let"s tamp down expectations. OLED monitors are far from mainstream among PC displays, and that won"t shift dramatically next year. In September, market researcher Trendforce predicted that OLED monitors will represent 2 percent of the monitor market in 2023. That"s far from mainstream. IPS monitors, for instance, represented 43 percent of monitors shipped in 2021.

So, if we had to bet on what type of monitor any given person was buying in the next year or two, our chips would be on LCD. Advertisement

Desktop monitors are popular among PC enthusiasts but, compared to other markets for displays, they’re a small market with small margins. As a result, companies that produce OLED panels place a focus on panels for markets with more volume. Production that targets other devices, like televisions, can be used to produce a monitor – but the results might not be what you expect.

“OLEDs can be produced cost effectively in smartphones and have come a long way in TVs and notebooks,” says Ross Young, CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants. “But the technology for monitors is not there yet. There will be some monitors promoted in 2022 that use TV fabs. However, those monitors will not be as high in resolution as LCD monitors.”

The high price can be difficult to justify, especially to mainstream shoppers unaware of OLED’s benefits. “Consumers are generally very approving of OLED displays,” says Anshel Sag, Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, “but it’s one of those technologies that you have to ‘see’ to believe, and that’s why you don’t quite get enough people switching over to it.”

OLED’s popularity should only increase as improvements reduce power consumption. “There are a number of near-term advances expected in reducing power […]” says Young. “These developments combined could reduce OLEDs power by more than 50%.” Future OLED manufacturing will also reduce costs to make OLED more competitive with LCDs in mid-range laptops.

It doesn’t help that desktop monitors are a worst-case stress test for OLED burn-in. Windows 11 and MacOS are designed with large static elements, like the Windows taskbar and MacOS dock, that rarely move or disappear even as applications are opened and closed. Modern habits contribute, too. Two decades of LCD monitor dominance have taught owners it’s ok to leave a monitor on, and without a screen saver, when it’s not in use.

“It would be nice if Microsoft were to solve this problem in Windows 11,” says Sag, “especially since they finally fixed the HDR problems Windows 10 had.” However, Microsoft hasn’t announced a plan to mitigate OLED burn-in issues. I don’t find that surprising. Microsoft didn’t move aggressively to support HDR until HDR monitors reached the mainstream market. I think the same will prove true of OLED.

The situation will improve as new OLED production becomes available through 2024, increasing capacity and lowering prices to a point that’s more appealing for desktop monitors. Laptops will move ahead of desktop monitors, though it’ll likely be years before they have a shot at matching the volume of LCDs.

LCD displays use a relatively new technology, but all of the early teething problems have long been worked out and the prices of LCD displays have fallen to the point that they are now mainstream products. A good LCD display, such as the ViewSonic VP191 19" model shown in Figure 11-2, provides top-notch image quality in a compact package. Although traditional CRTs have advantages of their own, most people who experience the bright, contrasty image of a good LCD display will never return to using a CRT monitor.

If you convert from a standard CRT display to a flat-screen CRT display or (particularly) an LCD display, you may notice an odd effect. Your eye and brain become used to seeing the curved surface of the old display as flat. The new display, which truly is flat, looks concave! Straight lines appear to bow inward, particularly if you work close to the display. The effect is so convincing that Robert actually held a straight-edge up to his new LCD display. Sure enough, the "bent" lines were straight. Don"t worry, though. The optical illusion disappears after only a couple hours" use.

CRT monitors were the dominant PC display technology until recently, but that has changed. For displays bundled with new PCs, LCDs exceeded CRTs in popularity by late 2002. By 2005, LCDs had also begun to outsell CRTs in retail channels. Lower cost and other advantages of CRTs ensure that they"ll remain available for years to come, but the emphasis has definitely shifted to LCDs.

Unlike CRT monitors, which have a maximum resolution but can easily be run at lower resolutions, LCDs are designed to operate at one resolution, called the native resolution. You can run an LCD at lower than native resolution, but that results in either the image occupying only part of the screen at full image quality or, via pixel extrapolation, the image occupying the full screen area but with greatly reduced image quality.

LCDs are available in analog-only, digital/analog hybrid, and digital-only interfaces. Using an analog interface requires converting the video signal from digital to analog inside the PC and then from analog to digital inside the monitor, which reduces image quality, particularly at higher resolutions. Synchronization problems occur frequently with analog interfaces, and can cause various undesirable display problems. Finally, analog interfaces are inherently noisier than digital interfaces, which causes subtle variations in display quality that can be quite disconcerting.

Whereas CRT monitors require high vertical refresh rates to ensure stable images, LCDs, because of their differing display technology, can use much lower refresh rates. For example, at 1280x1024 resolution on a CRT monitor, you"ll probably want to use an 85 Hz or higher refresh rate for good image quality. At the same resolution on an LCD, 60 Hz is a perfectly adequate refresh rate. In fact, on LCDs, a lower refresh rate often provides a better image than a higher refresh rate.

Unlike CRT monitors, whose phosphor-based pixels respond essentially instantaneously to the electron beam, LCD panels use transistors, which require time to turn on or turn off. That means there is a measurable lag between when a transistor is switched on or off and when the associated pixel changes to the proper state. That lag, called rise time for when the transistor is switched on and fall time for when it is switched off, results in a corresponding lag in image display.

Fast LCD response time is a Good Thing. Fast response means smoother scrolling and no ghosting or smearing, even when you view fast-motion video. Unfortunately, there"s no standard way to measure or specify response time, so different LCD makers use different methods. That means you can"t necessarily compare the response time specified by one LCD maker directly with that specified by another. (Actually, it"s worse than that; you can"t necessarily compare response times for two different models made by the same company.)

When LCDs first appeared, most makers specified rise-and-fall response in milliseconds (ms), the time required for a pixel to change from black to white (rise time) and then from white to black (fall time), also called the black-white-black (bwb) response. Nowadays, in addition to or instead of bwb, many LCD makers specify white-black-white (wbw) response and/or gray-to-gray (gtg) response, the time required to go from one level of gray to another.

It is not safe to make assumptions about one type of response time based on another type. For example, one LCD may have response times of 20 ms bwb and 8 ms gtg, while another model from the same manufacturer may have response times of 16 ms bwb and 12 ms gtg. So, is the second LCD slower or faster than the first? It depends on which numbers you decide to use. Advertisers use the fastest numbers available. Count on it.

LCDs are brighter than CRTs. A typical CRT has brightness of about 100 candelas/square meter, a unit of measurement called a nit. (Some displays are rated in foot Lamberts (fL); one fL equals about 3.43 nits). A typical LCD is rated at 250 to 350 nits, roughly three times as bright as a typical CRT. CRTs dim as they age, although a brightness control with enough range at the upper end can often be used to set an old CRT to near original brightness. The CCRTs used to backlight LCDs also dim as they age, but generally fail completely before reduced brightness becomes a major issue.

Contrast measures the difference in luminance between the brightest and dimmest portions of an image, and is expressed as a ratio. The ability to display a high-contrast image is an important aspect of image quality, particularly for text. An average CRT may have a contrast ratio of 200:1, and a superb CRT 250:1. An inexpensive LCD may have a contrast ratio of 400:1, and a superb LCD 1,000:1. In other words, even an inexpensive LCD may have higher contrast than an excellent CRT.

Even good flat-screen CRTs are subject to objectionable reflections when used in bright environments, such as having the screen facing a window. Good LCDs are much superior in this respect. Short of direct sunlight impinging on the screen, a good LCD provides excellent images under any lighting conditions.

A typical CRT is about as deep as its nominal screen size. For example, a 19" CRT may be 19" from front to back. Large CRTs may be difficult to fit physically in the available space. Conversely, LCDs are quite shallow. The panel itself typically ranges from 1.5" to 3" deep, and even with the base most LCDs are no more than 7" to 8" deep. Also, where a large CRT may weigh 50 to 100 pounds or more, even large LCDs are quite light. A typical 17" LCD might weigh 10 pounds, and even a 23" unit may weigh less than 20 pounds. That small size and weight means that it"s possible to desk- or wall-mount an LCD with relatively inexpensive mounting hardware, compared to the large, heavy, expensive mounting hardware needed for CRTs.

Stated LCD display sizes are accurate. For example, a 19" LCD has a display area that actually measures 19" diagonally. CRT sizes, on the other hand, are nominal because they specify the diagonal measurement of the entire CRT, part of which is covered by the bezel. For example, a nominal 19" CRT might have a display area that actually measures 18.1" diagonally. A couple of lawsuits several years ago convinced CRT makers to begin stating the usable size of their CRTs. This is stated as VIS (viewable image size or visible image size), and is invariably an inch or so smaller than the nominal size.

This VIS issue has given rise to the belief that a 15" LCD is equivalent to a 17" CRT, a 17" LCD to a 19" CRT, and so on. In fact, that"s not true. The image size of a typical 17" CRT is an inch or so larger than that of a 15" LCD, as is the image size of a 19" CRT relative to a 17" LCD.

Depending on size and other factors, a typical CRT consumes 100 to 160 watts while operating, while an LCD consumes only a quarter to a half as much power. Using an LCD reduces your electricity bill directly by consuming less power and indirectly by reducing the heating load on your air conditioning during hot weather.

Current LCDs are available in analog-only, digital-only, and models with both analog and digital inputs. Analog input is acceptable for 15" (1024x768) models, but for 17" (1280x1024) models analog video noise becomes an issue. At that screen size and resolution, analog noise isn"t immediately obvious to most people, but if you use the display for long periods the difference between using a display with a clean digital signal and one with a noisy analog signal will affect you on almost a subconscious level. For a 19" (1280x1024) LCD, we regard a digital signal as extremely desirable but not absolutely essential. For a larger display or above 1280x1024, we wouldn"t consider using analog signaling.

Insist on true 24-bit color support, which may be described as support for 16.7 million colors. Most current LCDs support 24-bit color, allocating one full byte to each of the three primary colors, which allows 256 shades of each color and a total of 16.7 million colors to be displayed. Many early LCDs and some inexpensive current models support only six bits per color, for a total of 18-bit color. These models use extrapolation to simulate full 24-bit color support, which results in poor color quality. If an LCD is advertised as "24-bit compatible," that"s good reason to look elsewhere. Oddly, many LCDs that do support true 24-bit color don"t bother to mention it in their spec sheets, while many that support only 18-bit color trumpet the fact that they are "24-bit compatible."

Most LCD makers produce three or more series of LCDs. Entry-level models are often analog-only, even in 19" and 21" sizes, and have slow response times. Midrange models usually accept analog or digital inputs, and generally have response times fast enough for anything except 3D gaming and similarly demanding uses. The best models may be analog/digital hybrids or digital-only, and have very fast response times. Choose an entry-level model only if you are certain that you will never use the display for anything more than word processing, web browsing, and similarly undemanding tasks. If you need a true CRT-replacement display, choose a midrange or higher model with a digital interface and the fastest response time you are willing to pay for.

Decide what panel size and resolution is right for you. Keep in mind that when you choose a specific LCD model, you are also effectively choosing the resolution that you will always use on that display.

Buy the LCD locally if possible. Whether or not you buy locally, insist on a no-questions-asked return policy. LCDs are more variable than CRT monitors, both in terms of unit-to-unit variation and in terms of usability with a particular graphics adapter. This is particularly important if you are using an analog interface. Some analog LCDs simply don"t play nice with some analog graphics adapters. Also, LCDs vary from unit to unit in how many defective pixels they have and where those are located. You might prefer a unit with five defective pixels near the edges and corners rather than a unit with only one or two defective pixels located near the center of the screen.

If you buy locally, ask the store to endorse the manufacturer"s warranty that is, to agree that if the LCD fails you can bring it back to the store for a replacement rather than dealing with the hassles of returning the LCD to the maker.

If possible, test the exact LCD you plan to buy (not a floor sample) before you buy it. Ideally, and particularly if you will use the analog interface, you should test the LCD with your own system, or at least with a system that has a graphics adapter identical to the one you plan to use. We"d go to some extremes to do this, including carrying our desktop system down to the local store. But if that isn"t possible for some reason, still insist on seeing the actual LCD you plan to buy running. That way, you can at least determine if there are defective pixels in locations that bother you. Also, use a neutral gray screen with no image to verify that the backlight evenly illuminates the entire screen. Some variation is unavoidable, but one or more corners should not be especially darker than the rest of the display, nor should there be any obvious "hot" spots.

Recommended Brands: Our opinion, confirmed by our readers and colleagues, is that NEC-Mitsubishi, Samsung, Sony, and ViewSonic make the best LCDs available. Their LCDs particularly their midrange and better models provide excellent image quality and are quite reliable. You"re likely to be happy with an LCD from any of these manufacturers.

Stick with good name brands and buy a midrange or higher model from within that name brand. That doesn"t guarantee that you"ll get a good LCD, but it does greatly increase your chances. The LCD market is extremely competitive. If two similar models differ greatly in price, the cheaper one likely has significantly worse specs. If the specs appear similar, the maker of the cheaper model has cut corners somewhere, whether in component quality, construction quality, or warranty policies.

There are plenty of new and confusing terms facing TV shoppers today, but when it comes down to the screen technology itself, there are only two: Nearly every TV sold today is either LCD or OLED.

The biggest between the two is in how they work. With OLED, each pixel provides its own illumination so there"s no separate backlight. With an LCD TV, all of the pixels are illuminated by an LED backlight. That difference leads to all kinds of picture quality effects, some of which favor LCD, but most of which benefit OLED.

LCDs are made by a number of companies across Asia. All current OLED TVs are built by LG Display, though companies like Sony and Vizio buy OLED panels from LG and then use their own electronics and aesthetic design.

So which one is better? Read on for their strengths and weaknesses. In general we"ll be comparing OLED to the best (read: most expensive) LCD has to offer, mainly because there"s no such thing as a cheap OLED TV (yet).

The better LCDs have local dimming, where parts of the screen can dim independently of others. This isn"t quite as good as per-pixel control because the black areas still aren"t absolutely black, but it"s better than nothing. The best LCDs have full-array local dimming, which provides even finer control over the contrast of what"s onscreen -- but even they can suffer from "blooming," where a bright area spoils the black of an adjacent dark area.

One of the main downsides of LCD TVs is a change in picture quality if you sit away from dead center (as in, off to the sides). How much this matters to you certainly depends on your seating arrangement, but also on how much you love your loved ones.

A few LCDs use in-plane switching (IPS) panels, which have better off-axis picture quality than other kinds of LCDs, but don"t look as good as other LCDs straight on (primarily due to a lower contrast ratio).

OLED doesn"t have the off-axis issue LCDs have; its image looks basically the same, even from extreme angles. So if you have a wide seating area, OLED is the better option.

Nearly all current TVs are HDR compatible, but that"s not the entire story. Just because a TV claims HDR compatibility doesn"t mean it can accurately display HDR content. All OLED TVs have the dynamic range to take advantage of HDR, but lower-priced LCDs, especially those without local-dimming backlights, do not. So if you want to see HDR content it all its dynamic, vibrant beauty, go for OLED or an LCD with local dimming.

In our tests comparing the best new OLED and LCD TVs with HDR games and movies, OLED usually looks better. Its superior contrast and lack of blooming win the day despite LCD"s brightness advantage. In other words LCD TVs can get brighter, especially in full-screen bright scenes and HDR highlights, but none of them can control that illumination as precisely as an OLED TV.

The energy consumption of LCD varies depending on the backlight setting. The lower the backlight, the lower the power consumption. A basic LED LCD with its backlight set low will draw less power than OLED.

LG has said their OLED TVs have a lifespan of 100,000 hours to half brightness, a figure that"s similar to LED LCDs. Generally speaking, all modern TVs are quite reliable.

Does that mean your new LCD or OLED will last for several decades like your parent"s last CRT (like the one pictured). Probably not, but then, why would you want it to? A 42-inch flat panel cost $14,000 in the late 90"s, and now a 65-inch TV with more than 16x the resolution and a million times better contrast ratio costs $1,400. Which is to say, by the time you"ll want/need to replace it, there will be something even better than what"s available now, for less money.

OLED TVs are available in sizes from 48 to 88 inches, but LCD TVs come in smaller and larger sizes than that -- with many more choices in between -- so LCD wins. At the high end of the size scale, however, the biggest "TVs" don"t use either technology.

If you want something even brighter, and don"t mind spending a literal fortune to get it, Samsung, Sony, and LG all sell direct-view LED displays. In most cases these are

You can get 4K resolution, 50-inch LCDs for around $400 -- or half that on sale. It"s going to be a long time before OLEDs are that price, but they have come down considerably.

LCD dominates the market because it"s cheap to manufacture and delivers good enough picture quality for just about everybody. But according to reviews at CNET and elsewhere, OLED wins for overall picture quality, largely due to the incredible contrast ratio. The price difference isn"t as severe as it used to be, and in the mid- to high-end of the market, there are lots of options.

Liquid-crystal-display televisions (LCD TVs) are television sets that use liquid-crystal displays to produce images. They are, by far, the most widely produced and sold television display type. LCD TVs are thin and light, but have some disadvantages compared to other display types such as high power consumption, poorer contrast ratio, and inferior color gamut.

LCD TVs rose in popularity in the early years of the 21st century, surpassing sales of cathode ray tube televisions worldwide in 2007.plasma display panels and rear-projection television.

Passive matrix LCDs first became common as portable computer displays in the 1980s, competing for market share with plasma displays. The LCDs had very slow refresh rates that blurred the screen even with scrolling text, but their light weight and low cost were major benefits. Screens using reflective LCDs required no internal light source, making them particularly well suited to laptop computers. Refresh rates of early devices were too slow to be useful for television.

Portable televisions were a target application for LCDs. LCDs consumed far less battery power than even the miniature tubes used in portable televisions of the era. In 1980, Hattori Seiko"s R&D group began development on color LCD pocket televisions. In 1982, Seiko Epson released the first LCD television, the Epson TV Watch, a small wrist-worn active-matrix LCD television. Sharp Corporation introduced the dot matrix TN-LCD in 1983, and Casio introduced its TV-10 portable TV.Citizen Watch introduced the Citizen Pocket TV, a 2.7-inch color LCD TV, with the first commercial TFT LCD display.

Throughout this period, screen sizes over 30" were rare as these formats would start to appear blocky at normal seating distances when viewed on larger screens. LCD projection systems were generally limited to situations where the image had to be viewed by a larger audience. At the same time, plasma displays could easily offer the performance needed to make a high quality display, but suffered from low brightness and very high power consumption. Still, some experimentation with LCD televisions took place during this period. In 1988, Sharp introduced a 14-inch active-matrix full-color full-motion TFT-LCD. These were offered primarily as high-end items, and were not aimed at the general market. This led to Japan launching an LCD industry, which developed larger-size LCDs, including TFT computer monitors and LCD televisions. Epson developed the 3LCD projection technology in the 1980s, and licensed it for use in projectors in 1988. Epson"s VPJ-700, released in January 1989, was the world"s first compact, full-color LCD projector.

In 2006, LCD prices started to fall rapidly and their screen sizes increased, although plasma televisions maintained a slight edge in picture quality and a price advantage for sets at the critical 42" size and larger. By late 2006, several vendors were offering 42" LCDs, albeit at a premium price, encroaching upon plasma"s only stronghold. More decisively, LCDs offered higher resolutions and true 1080p support, while plasmas were stuck at 720p, which made up for the price difference.

Predictions that prices for LCDs would rapidly drop through 2007 led to a "wait and see" attitude in the market, and sales of all large-screen televisions stagnated while customers watched to see if this would happen.Christmas sales season.

When the sales figures for the 2007 Christmas season were finally tallied, analysts were surprised to find that not only had LCD outsold plasma, but CRTs as well, during the same period.Pioneer Electronics was ending production of the plasma screens was widely considered the tipping point in that technology"s history as well.

In spite of LCD"s dominance of the television field, other technologies continued to be developed to address its shortcomings. Whereas LCDs produce an image by selectively blocking a backlight, organic LED, microLED, field-emission display and surface-conduction electron-emitter display technologies all produce an illuminated image directly. In comparison to LCDs all of these technologies offer better viewing angles, much higher brightness and contrast ratio (as much as 5,000,000:1), and better color saturation and accuracy. They also use less power, and in theory they are less complex and less expensive to build.

LCD computer displays with a 16:10 ratio first rose to mass market prominence in 2003. By 2008, the 16:10 aspect ratio had become the most common aspect ratio for LCD monitors and laptop displays.16:9 became the mainstream standard. This shift was driven by lower manufacturing costs and the 16:9 aspect ratio being used as a standard in modern televisions.

Until about 2003, most computer monitors had a 4:3 aspect ratio, with some using a 5:4 ratio. Between 2003 and 2006, monitors with 16:10 aspect ratios became commonly available, first in laptops, and later in display monitors. Such displays were considered better suited for word processing and computer-aided design.

From 2005 to 2008, 16:10 overtook 4:3 as the highest-selling aspect ratio for LCD monitors. At the time, 16:10 made up 90% of the notebook market, and was the most commonly used aspect ratio for laptops.

Around 2008–2010, computer display manufacturers began a rapid shift to the 16:9 aspect ratio. By 2011, 16:10 had almost disappeared from new mass-market products. By October 2012, the market share of 16:10 displays had dropped to less than 23%, according to Net Applications.

The primary reason for this move was considered to be production efficiency:resolutions. This helped consumers adopt such products more easily, "stimulating the growth of the notebook PC and LCD monitor market".

The shift from 16:10 to 16:9 was met with a mixed response. The lower cost of 16:9 computer displays was seen as a positive, along with their suitability for gaming and movies, as well as the convenience of having the same aspect ratio in different devices.

Tablets started to enjoy mainstream popularity beginning late 2010/early 2011 and remain popular to the present day. Aspect ratios for tablets typically include 16:10, 16:9, and 4:3. Tablets have caused a shift in production away from purely 16:9 aspect ratios and a resurgence of "productivity" aspect ratios (including 16:10 and 4:3) in place of "media" aspect ratios (16:9 and ultra-widescreen formats). The format remains widely popular in the TV and smartphone industries, where it is more suited.