tft display review quotation

This IPS TFT display has a high resolution 1024x600 screen. The IPS technology delivers exceptional image quality with superior color reproduction and contrast ratio at any angle. This 24-bit true color Liquid Crystal Display includes better FPC design with EMI shielding on the cable, is RoHS compliant, and does not include a touchscreen.

Choose from a wide selection of interface options or talk to our experts to select the best one for your project. We can incorporate HDMI, USB, SPI, VGA and more into your display to achieve your design goals.

Equip your display with a custom cut cover glass to improve durability. Choose from a variety of cover glass thicknesses and get optical bonding to protect against moisture and debris.

I’ve always liked the ViewSonic VP range of monitors – they achieved an impressive balance of great screen quality, pleasing design and well considered ergonomics. In fact the design and ergonomics of the VP range were second to none, which was surprising considering how long ViewSonic kept the design static. But now the VP range has been updated, with the VP930 being the first of the new breed to make its way into the TrustedReviews lab. Of course the big question is, how does this new model compare to the outgoing one?

Unlike many of the super-low response time monitors that have hit the streets recently, the VP930 uses a proper 8-bit panel – that means you’re getting the full 16.7 million colours as opposed to 16.2 million. ViewSonic quotes an 8ms grey to grey response time, which equates to 20ms using the old off-on-off measurement. To be honest though, I don’t really put too much stock in response time – I play a lot of games and I’d be hard pushed to see any difference between a 4ms and 16ms display. In fact I played several games on the VP930 and it performed brilliantly, but to be fair that’s not what the VP range is all about.

Now, image quality can be a subjective thing, and what one person deems to be good, isn’t necessarily going to please someone else. This is why we use DisplayMate to highlight strengths and weaknesses in monitors. Unfortunately DisplayMate did manage to highlight some shortcomings in the VP930. The Dark Greyscale test proved to be an issue for the VP930 where it failed to bring out the low intensity greys no matter how much adjustment I tried.

To be fair though, these shortcomings didn’t seem to creep into day to day use. I’ve been using the VP930 for the past couple of weeks as my main display and it has performed admirably, even when doing Photoshop work. It is a shame though that previous VP monitors have sailed through the DisplayMate tests without breaking a sweat.

PerfectSuite is quite a useful application that will help guide novices though monitor setup and balancing the brightness and contrast for the best possible image. Unfortunately, even after following the steps in PerfectSuite the VP930 couldn’t make it through the DisplayMate obstacle course unscathed. One feature that I really liked in PerfectSuite is the ability to set auto-pivot. This means that as soon as you rotate the screen into portrait mode, your desktop will reconfigure automatically – very cool.

With a price of £377.86, the VP930 is more expensive than the outgoing VP191s that it replaces, while not exhibiting the same level of image quality. There’s no doubt that the VP930 retains the design, features and build quality of the previous VP series screens, but it’s just a shame that it stumbled in the DisplayMate tests.

The VP930 is a beautifully designed 19in monitor with more features than you could shake a stick at. The price is high, but you’ll soon forgive that when you see the connection and adjustment options. Unfortunately the image quality is just not up to the high level that ViewSonic set with previous VP displays.

The higher the contrast ratio, the better. This will also help indicate the black depth of the screen and how well the screen can handle differences between light and dark content. Be wary of dynamic contrast ratio figures being quoted nowadays and you will need to understand what the difference is between those and the ‘static contrast ratio’. Nowadays you will see static contrast ratio figures ranging up to ~5000:1 in some cases. DCR can range up in the millions:1 but are massively exaggerated. Make sure you understand which contrast ratio figure is being quoted in a spec and ideally read a review where it is really tested.

The higher the refresh rate, the better the screen would be for gaming generally. Refresh rate has a direct impact on motion clarity and frame rate support for the screen. Most high refresh rate panels are 120 or 144Hz natively which is a significant improvement over 60Hz standard refresh rate panels. Keep an eye out for “overclocked” refresh rates as well with some manufacturers boosting the natively supported refresh rate higher. Results of that overclock will vary so try and check out reviews before you assume it will offer further improvements.

PLS (Plane to Line Switching)= S-PLS, a Samsung technology exclusive to them and very similar to LG.Display’s IPS in performance and can therefore be called an “IPS-type” technology

AHVA (Advanced Hyper-Viewing Angle) = developed by AU Optronics as another alternative to LG.Display’s IPS, very similar again and so can be called “IPS-type”

Colour gamut – don’t assume that a higher colour gamut is better! The gamut represents the colour space that the backlighting unit of the monitor allows the screen to display. You need to understand that most normal content is based on a certain colour space (sRGB) and that there can be issues if you view this using a wide gamut screen. See here for more information.

A. Generally nowadays with all the ultra-low response time models available, ghosting caused by slow pixel response times is just not an issue for the majority of users. Performance has improved significantly over the years and blurring and ghosting has been largely eliminated on the faster displays. The use of RTC technologies (overdrive) significantly helps improve response times and speed up pixel transitions. This is particularly important on IPS/VA type displays which can be very slow where RTC is not used. Look out for response time specs quoted with a “G2G” (grey to grey) response time as that should indicate the use of overdrive technologies.

Nowadays screens supporting high refresh rates (120Hz+) input frequencies are becoming more and come common, and these can help reduce motion blur and ghosting and improve gaming performance considerably. They are also able to support higher frame rates than traditional 60Hz displays and some are also capable of supporting 3D stereoscopic content through active shutter glasses. Do be careful of assuming that a screen advertised as supporting 3D is in fact able to support 120Hz though, as some 3D models do not support this and instead use passive methods to produce the 3D effect (see here for more info on 3D technologies). Refresh rate of the panel does have a direct impact on motion clarity and for optimal gaming performance you will want to consider those high refresh rate displays above 60Hz.

Ghosting and motion blur perception may also depend on how susceptible you are as a user, as one person may see no ghosting, another may see lots on the same panel. The best bet is to try and see a TFT in action in a shop and see for yourself, if that’s not possible you will have to settle for the opinions of other users and take the plunge! Also be careful to get an idea of real life performance in practice, and don’t just rely on quoted specs. While they are often a good rough guide to the gaming performance, they are not always reliable.

One area which cannot be eliminated fully through response time improvements is perceived motion blur. This is related to how the human eye tracks movement on hold-type displays like LCD’s. In recent years several methods have been used to help provide improved motion blur for users. Models featuring LightBoost backlights for 3D gaming were found to be “hackable” to bring about motion blur benefits through the use of their strobed backlight system. Other displays have now introduced native strobed backlights to offer similar benefits. Look out for models with Motion Blur Reduction backlights like the BenQ XL2420Z / XL2720Z (Blur Reduction mode), Eizo Foris FG2421 (Turbo 240) and Asus ROG Swift PG278Q (ULMB) for instance. ULMB as a feature is common on NVIDIA G-sync enabled displays where high refresh rate is used.

Have a read here about response times if you are unsure about what specs mean or want more information. Generally modern TN Film panels will offer the fastest response times, and often also support 120Hz input frequencies for 3D support / extended frame rates. Look out for models with a quoted “G2G” response time indicating they also use overdrive which can really help in practice. Modern IPS-type panels can also be very fast where overdrive is applied well, so again look for “G2G” figures. High refresh rate IPS panels are also becoming more common which helps improve motion clarity further. Other technologies like PVA and MVA are unfortunately quite slow in practice by modern standards, even where overdrive or high refresh rates are used. Check reviews to be sure of an individual screens performance wherever possible.

A. As a rule of thumb, it would normally be best to use the digital video connection end to end to connect your device to your monitor. For a PC, this would commonly be DisplayPort, HDMI or DVI which offer a pure digital end to end connection between the graphics card and the monitor. DisplayPort is needed to run the high resolution/high refresh rate panels so you will need to ensure your graphics card has a DP output. Some screens or cards use Mini DP instead of the full size version, but that is simply a different size connection and can be easily inter-changed with “normal” DisplayPort. Cables which are DP at one end, and Mini DP at the other are common and simple to use.

HDMI and DisplayPort are also common digital connections now being offer, but unlike DVI are also capable of carrying audio as well as video. The picture quality should not be any different between DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort in theory as long as no additional video “enhancements” are applied when using one over the other. Bandwidth requirements will vary so this might influence which type you need to use depending on the screen resolution and refresh rate.

Converting between DVI and HDMI is easy and cables are readily available to offer that if needed (keeping in mind you will lose the sound transmission when it reaches the DVI). Converting between DVI/HDMI and DisplayPort is far more tricky and not simple to achieve. It is very hit and miss and working active adapters are expensive. We would advise avoiding the attempt to convert DP to HDMI/DVI if you can.

A. There is a lot of talk about colour depth on TFT screens, now more than ever with the emergence of 6-bit IPS and VA panels. At one time TN Film was the main 6-bit technology but today that is no longer the case. It’s important to put this into perspective though, and not jump on the bandwagon of 8-bit being much, much better than 6-bit. Or even 10-bit being much better than 8-bit.

An 8-bit display would offer a colour palette of 16.7 million colours. They offer a ‘true’ colour palette, and are generally the choice of manufacturers for colour critical displays over 6-bit panels. On the other hand modern 6-bit screens use a range of Frame Rate Control (FRC) technologies to extend the colour palette from 262,144 colours to around 16.7m. In fact on many modern panels these FRC are very good and in practice you’d be hard pressed to spot any real difference between a 6-bit + FRC display and a true 8-bit display. Colour range is good, screens show no obvious gradation of colours, and they show no FRC artefacts or glitches in normal everyday use. Most average users would never notice the difference and so it is more important to think about the panel technology and your individual uses than get bogged down worrying about 6-bit vs. 8-bit arguments.

Manufacturers use 6-bit panels (+FRC) to help keep costs lower. As a result, a modern range of IPS and VA panels is also now produced which use 6-bit colour depth (+FRC) instead of true 8-bit colour depths. At the other end of the scale there are also some panels which can offer support of 10-bit colour depth. Again these come in two flavours, being either a true 10-bit panel (quite rare and expensive) offering 1.07 billion colours or an 8-bit panel with an additional FRC stage added (1.07 billion colours produced through FRC). The 8-bit +FRC panels are of course more common and will often be used to offer “10-bit” support in desktop displays. With 10-bit colour though there is also an additional consideration which is whether you would ever even be able to use this in your work. You can also only make use of this 10-bit support if you have a full end-to-end 10-bit workflow, including a supporting software, graphics card and operating system which is still very rare and expensive for most users. So for many people the use of a 10-bit capable panel is rather meaningless.

While a larger colour space might sound like a good idea, it’s not always for everyone. You need to keep in mind what content you will be viewing on the screen, and what colour space that content is based on. Since sRGB is very common and the standard for many things like Windows and the internet, viewing sRGB content on an extended gamut screen can cause oversaturation of colours and an unrealistic ‘stretching’ of the colours. Reds and greens in particular can appear quite ‘neon’ and some users do not like this. The smaller colour space of the content is, as a very crude description, ‘stretched’ over the larger colour space of the monitor. On the other hand, some applications are colour space aware (e.g. Adobe Photoshop) and so if you are working with extended gamut content, you will prefer an extended gamut screen. I’d certainly recommend reading more into this as it is only a brief summary here. Where a screen has an extended gamut, they sometimes provide an sRGB emulation mode which work to varying degrees. Handy if you might need to use it, but make sure the screen offers a decent performance when in this mode and that it works. At the end of the day, the choice of monitor might very well depend on the colour space you want to work with. For most average users a standard CCFL or W-LED backlit display with a standard sRGB gamut would probably be preferred.

A. The simplest and cheapest way to clean a TFT screen is with a slightly damp cloth; wipe off the left behind water with a towel or similar then smooth/dry completely with a yellow polishing cloth. Be careful not to use products such as toilet paper and kitchen roll as they contain lint and can leave scratches on your beloved screen! Cleaning solution from opticians and lint free clothes for lens cleaning are also very good.

A. Unfortunately dead pixels can be an issue on TFT screens as they are often developed during the manufacturing stage. For retail costs to be kept low the companies cannot afford to make all screens defect-free and check for dead pixels all the time. Pixels can be described in the following ways:

If you want to ensure that you receive a pixel perfect screen (and who wouldn’t at the kind of prices you are paying for the TFT!?!) then you can often pay for pixel checks from some online retailers. Beware though! Never buy a TFT from retailers who offer the pixel check without having the check done as you can be sure the screens they find to be non-perfect will be winging their way to the customers who don’t have the check! The only other option to ensure you get a pixel perfect screen is to check out the panel in a shop in person, then you can see for yourself…..

If you find you have a dead pixel there is not a lot you can do unfortunately. If you have a certain number of dead pixels (usually at least 3 or a certain number centrally on the panel) then the manufacturer will replace the TFT for you, but the number of dead pixels needed before this happens varies between each manufacturer, so check with them before you order if you’re concerned.

If you still have a dead pixel problem, can’t bring it back to life and can’t RMA it under warranty then you can sometimes return it to the stockist if you purchased it online. If you bought online you can take advantage of the “Distance Selling Act” which entitles you to return any item within 7 days as you were not present at the time of purchase. If you are not happy with your TFT you can return it at your cost of postage and often claim a refund or exchange. However, be aware that a lot of places will try and charge you restocking fees and they will almost certainly specify the goods must be packaged and in the same condition as when you received it, so be careful to package it back up nicely. Legally, if the stocker accepts the TFT back as a return governed by the Distance Selling Act, then they are NOT allowed to charge you a restocking fee as covered in the Government Regulations. This selling act is not widely advertised by retailers, but does exist if you really need to use it. You should only have to pay for postage to send it back to them.

The “gamut” of a display refers to the range of colours it can display, and for LCD monitors this is normally related to the backlight type that is used to light the screen from behind the LCD panel. There are several common reference colour spaces that you will no doubt have heard of, including the long-standing “sRGB” reference space and more recently adopted standards in the monitor market like DCI-P3 or Adobe RGB. This article will provide a hopefully simple overview of what colour gamut is, then take a top level look at the different ways to measure and quote this spec, without delving in to loads of overly technical or complicated information that might bore you too much. We will also talk about our newly improved testing methodology and equipment we will start to use for future reviews to enhance our accuracy and data we can report.

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Experiments at the beginning of the last century into the human eye eventually led in 1931 to the creation of a system that encompassed all the range of colours our eyes can perceive. Its graphical representation is called a CIE diagram as shown in the image above. All the colours perceived by the eye are within the collared area. This standard is called CIE-1931 and is widely used throughout the world to be able to measure and compare colours for printed documents as well as displays. The CIE-1931 standard maps colours to a 2 dimensional x,y space as shown above. It is sometimes referred to as a “CIE-1931 xy chromaticity diagram”

The CIE-1931 color space has worked well to enable accurate color reproduction in print and displays. Unfortunately, further study revealed that the severity of color differences, as perceived by humans, were non-uniform in the CIE-1931 color space. What that means is that for example two blue colours at a certain distance ‘v’ in the CIE-1931 color space will look more different to humans than two green colours at the same distance ‘v’. In 1976 a new color space, called CIE-1976, was introduced to fix this issue. The CIE-1976 color space, as shown above, was specifically designed to align uniformly with human perception. This is sometimes referred to as a “CIE-1976 u’v’ chromaticity diagram”. The CIE-1931 color space should no longer really be used, but today’s reality is that it is still prevalent throughout the industry.

You may well see some display manufacturers quoting colour gamut figures in their specs and marketing, but you need to be mindful of whether they are based on the 1931 or 1976 CIE reference. This will have an impact on the coverage % and so if you are comparing different displays, you need to ensure you’re comparing like for like (i.e. comparing CIE 1931 against 1931 for both displays). CIE-1931 tends to still be far more common so if it’s not specified, it’s likely that is what is being used.

Within this overall CIE area there are various standard colour spaces that have been defined over the years. In the display market these define a certain range of colours that the screen can produce and is related to the backlight of the screen, as opposed to the panel itself.

When discussing monitor colour gamut many manufacturers will quote how much of this sRGB space the screen can cover, with modern “standard gamut” LED backlights normally covering 97 – 100% of this reference space quite easily. It’s important for a screen to have good coverage of sRGB at least to ensure accurate colour reproduction and so that it can display the full range of colours it is supposed to, when viewing common sRGB-based content.

Many modern displays are now promoted as featuring “wide colour gamut” (WCG), being able to produce colours that are beyond the range of traditional “standard gamut” sRGB displays. This is achieved in a number of ways by enhancing the backlight with special treatments or films (e.g. Quantum Dot coating), or using certain backlight types in some cases such as RGB LED. The result is a screen that can offer more vivid and saturated colours that stretch beyond sRGB and try to confirm to other colour space standards, supporting content created and intended to be displayed in these wider colour spaces. Some common wide gamut reference spaces include:

In simplistic terms where high coverage of DCI-P3 is achieved, a user knows that it can offer wider colour range than a standard sRGB gamut screen, and will allow them to better display content that has been produced based on this standard. Modern HDR movies, videos and games are good examples of where DCI-P3 is used for creation, and where you ideally therefore need a DCI-P3 supporting screen to show them properly.

Many modern displays will therefore quote a DCI-P3 coverage %. Again you need to be careful of whether this is relative to CIE-1931 or 1976 and ideally you’d want it to be as close to 100% coverage as possible if you want to be able to accurately produce the intended colours from DCI-P3 content. Nowadays this DCI-P3 coverage provides a fairly useful comparison spec when comparing wide gamut screens, since sRGB is no longer wide enough unless you refer to over-coverage figures, which can sometimes be misleading or can get a bit silly.

One thing you will often see in specs and marketing is a colour gamut spec relative to sRGB, but quoted beyond 100%. We also currently provide this in our reviews as we feel it’s quite a useful comparison figure between different displays. For a wide gamut screen this basically shows how far beyond sRGB the colour space extends, so you will see figures such as 130% sRGB and so on quoted.

The problem with this over-coverage spec is that it could be a little misleading or prone to error. For instance in the example CIE-1976 space above you can see an example monitor gamut plotted against the sRGB reference. In this case the monitor goes beyond sRGB for the green and blue primaries, but just falls short for the red primary. The total area of the monitor gamut is bigger than sRGB, but reporting a >100% coverage for the sRGB standard would be technically incorrect because not all sRGB color can be accurately displayed.

Quoting an over-coverage of sRGB is technically possible only if the sRGB gamut is fully covered at 100% on it’s own. We will continue to provide some measurements and context in our reviews in this area in the future anyway as it can be a useful reference point to compare different screens.

Most manufacturer websites and marketing brochures will list the colour gamut of the display nowadays. We’ve already mentioned earlier about being careful whether they are quoting CIE-1931 (the most common still) or CIE-1976 coverage specs. You need to compare like for like at least. Some of the specs they quote might be based on their own internal testing at the factory which should be reliable but probably still needs validating by third parties or reviewers. This factory measurement is especially likely to have happened if you see rather specific specs like “97.6% DCI-P3” for example. Other times it might be a more generic figure based on the intended panel/backlight spec of the part they are using, which is often just quoted broadly by panel manufacturers as something like “~95% DCI-P3” or “>90% DCI-P3” or similar. Take marketing specs with a pinch of salt as ever.

It is possible to get some information about a monitors colour gamut from the display’s EDID information too. Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) is a metadata format for display devices to describe their capabilities to a video source (e.g. graphics card or set-top box). The data format is defined by a standard published by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA).

The free VESA DisplayHDR test tool is a useful tool for some testing elements, but also provides some information read from the monitor EDID. Below for example is the report from the LG 38GL950G (a Native G-sync screen):

In this section in the middle it reports the RGB primary xy numbers and from there it accurately calculates the gamut coverage for several popular and common colour spaces (relative to CIE-1976) including sRGB, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 and Rec.2020. We have validated that these calculations are correct incidentally using the tools discussed later in this article. This could in theory be a useful and quick way to establish the colour gamut capabilities of the display, although the crucial thing here is to consider whether you can trust the EDID information or not?

The EDID information is provided by the display manufacturer so in one sense you might want to put as much faith in to that spec as you might in to any other spec they market for the display! This information could potentially be very hit and miss from display to display and from one manufacturer to another. It is always a good idea to test the gamut independently if you can, or refer to review sites like TFTCentral who will measure it as well independently.

In some cases you might be able to put more faith in this information contained within the EDID. For instance we know that Native NVIDIA G-sync screens are factory colour calibrated as part of the strict NVIDIA process with highly accurate equipment and processes, and the information recorded in detail in the EDID. It is likely that many other non-G-sync screens might not update this EDID information accurately in the factory in this same way. There is a high chance some values could be average figures, desired/expected, or even just made up. As a result it’s always better to independently verify the results if you can with a highly accurate method, or refer to review sites who can do that for you in their testing.

We have now updated our testing methodology to include tests with a new spectroradiometer device, the UPRtek MK550T spectroradiometer. This helps increase our accuracy and provide further measurements in our reviews. Check out the linked article where we look at this new device, its software and the various other useful and new things it will allow us to do. Here we will just talk about how it can help improve our colour gamut measurements and accuracy. This is an expensive but well regarded device and should provide improved levels of accuracy when measuring colour spaces.

sRGB coverage – Firstly the manufacturer quotes a 135% sRGB coverage in an effort to provide a comparison point against other screens quoted in a similar way, so you can tell that it has an even wider colour space coverage than a screen that might be 120% sRGB for example. It also highlights the fact that it is a decent way beyond a normal “standard gamut” sRGB screen (typically quoted as 97 – 100% sRGB). We’ve talked earlier about whether or not quoting over-coverage in this way is appropriate or can lead to errors, but our view is that it’s a useful additional spec. In our original review we were able to confirm using our i1 Pro 2 device and ChromaPure software a 130.9% sRGB coverage so this was close to the spec. Measurement with the UPRtek spectroradiometer device and gamut calculation software will not allow over-coverage calculation in the same way, so we only confirm here that 100% coverage of the sRGB space is achieved regardless of whether you are considering CIE 1931 or 1976. This was not checked with our old method, as only an over-coverage spec was calculated, without consideration for if the sRGB gamut was covered exactly and fully. The UPRtek device allows us to confirm this more thoroughly. So in this instance, given 100% is covered, the 130.9% over-coverage spec is valid too. So we can summarise that the 38GL950G in its native wide gamut mode can successfully cover 100% of the sRGB reference, and extends beyond that to around 130.9% for comparison purposes with other screens.

We won’t provide all these measurements in our future reviews, we will think of a simpler and easier way to present figures that you can easily refer to and rely on.

Below this is the information reported from the EDID in the VESA Display HDR tool which provides CIE-1976 coverage calculations. This is listed as the Native gamut as well:

We carried out the same tests on the recently reviewed Asus ROG Swift PG329Q which had a particularly wide colour gamut. This is an adaptive-sync screen (i.e. not a Native G-sync module screen like the LG 38GL950G is) which also gives us a chance to sanity check the EDID information again and see whether that is accurate, or is less reliable than the NVIDIA calibrated EDID information from Native G-sync screens.

sRGB coverage – Firstly the manufacturer quotes a 160% sRGB coverage in an effort to provide a comparison point against other screens quoted in a similar way, so you can tell that it has an even wider colour space coverage than a screen that might be 130% sRGB for example. It also highlights the fact that it is a long way beyond a normal “standard gamut” sRGB screen (typically quoted as 97 – 100% sRGB). We’ve talked earlier about whether or not quoting over-coverage in this way is appropriate or can lead to errors, but our view is that it’s a useful additional spec. In our original review we were able to confirm using our i1 Pro 2 device and ChromaPure software a 157.4% sRGB coverage so this was close to the spec. Measurement with the UPRtek spectroradiometer device and gamut calculation software will not allow over-coverage calculation in the same way, so we only confirm here that 100% coverage of the sRGB space is achieved regardless of whether you are considering CIE 1931 or 1976. This was not checked with our old method, as only an over-coverage spec was calculated. The UPRtek device allows us to confirm this more thoroughly. So in this instance, given 100% is covered, the 157.4% over-coverage spec is valid too. So we can summarise that the PG329Q in its native wide gamut mode can successfully cover 100% of the sRGB reference, and extends beyond that to around 157.4%.

We won’t provide all these measurements in our future reviews, we will think of a simpler and easier way to present figures that you can easily refer to and rely on.

Below this is the information reported from the EDID in the VESA Display HDR tool which provides CIE-1976 coverage calculations. This is listed as the Native gamut as well:

The improved accuracy of the new method means we can provide better colour gamut results in our future reviews. We will provide colour gamut results as in the following example:

A better option is if you can hardware calibrate the display itself. This feature is usually reserved for high end colour critical and professional monitors, where access to the monitors Look Up Table (LUT) is available. You need a calibration tool and software of your own for this, but you can actually calibrate the screen at a hardware level as opposed to needing to use an ICC profile at the graphics card level. Generally the calibration software will automatically correct all the settings of the monitor and make all corrections to the hardware LUT, which ensures all the changes are being made to the monitor itself. When you carry out this process you can usually define the colour space you want to calibrate to, and so you can hardware calibrate the screen specifically to sRGB if you want.

This is more accurate and flexible than a software based ICC profile, helping ensure that tonal values are retained and there are no introduced issues like banding or loss of detail. The other major benefit with hardware calibration is that because the settings are saved to the monitor itself, this is active for all applications and uses. You don’t need to mess around with ICC profile usage, and the settings apply for games, movies and all software because its all being done from the display itself. Unfortunately this feature is reserved at the moment for higher end and professional grade screens so is not widely available to your average user.

Another useful way to overcome this challenge is by using a so-called “sRGB emulation mode”. This is provided on many wide gamut screens as a preset mode where the screen itself deliberately reduces or “clamps” the native wide gamut back to the sRGB reference space, or as close to it as possible. You will see us check the availability and performance of any sRGB emulation mode in our reviews.

This can often work well, helping reduce the colour gamut and providing a preset mode the user can easily switch to when viewing SDR and sRGB content. Quite often the display manufacturer will also include a factory calibration of this mode to ensure reliable gamma, colour temperature and colour accuracy out of the box. There is often a major limitation with these sRGB emulation modes though, and that relates to the flexibility of the OSD settings. We have found that annoyingly many sRGB emulation modes are designed to work only a pre-defined list of settings, and the user loses access normally to things like the gamma modes and RGB controls. This means that unless the screen is reliably set up out of the box you cannot easily correct anything at the hardware level. If the gamma curve is off, or the colour temperature is too warm or cool, you are a bit stuck. You can carry out a software profiling of the screen and create a calibrated ICC profile, but you are forced to try and make the corrections at the graphics card level which can often introduce issues with banding and loss of tonal values. Worse still are instances where the sRGB emulation mode has a locked brightness control, meaning you are stuck with whatever the manufacturer has decided is the right level, usually much too bright for normal use. We really dislike sRGB emulation modes that are restricted in this way. Ideally you’d have full access to the OSD controls, but at the very least we need access to the brightness control.

We will always penalise a display in our reviews if it is a wide gamut screen but there is no sRGB emulation mode, or if the mode is inflexible or unusable. Don’t take it for granted that every modern wide gamut display will feature this option. Even very recent displays like the Dell Alienware AW2721D and AW3821DW lack this mode from the display. The other thing to keep in mind is that the availability of this mode is rarely mentioned by the manufacturer on their spec pages, so it’s sometimes hard to know whether it will even be possible.

Another possible solution is available from AMD graphics cards, something that has pretty much been overlooked or hidden for a fair while. Within the graphics card drivers and software for AMD cards is a “hidden” sRGB emulation function. This was brought to our attention actually by PCmonitors.info who discussed it in their article about colour gamut as well. As we understand it this feature reads the EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) of the monitor which usually contains information on the native gamut and adjusts the colour output to sRGB based on that.

This is fine if the EDID is reporting the native gamut as the colour space, which is normal, but we have seen examples like with the Asus ROG Swift PG329Q discussed above where the EDID instead reports the sRGB gamut. We do not have access to that screen any more to be able to test the impact of this AMD setting but it’s one to be wary of. It’s likely that the graphic card would realise the coordinates are sRGB and the setting would therefore not make any difference as it thinks it is sRGB standard gamut already. But that means that it would not be able to restrict the wide gamut to sRGB as it doesn’t realise it is wide gamut to start with. PCmonitors report that their testing on a broad range of screens suggests that this setting works well for wide gamut displays, clamping the gamut to sRGB when the feature is used. We will do some future testing ourselves on future wide gamut displays we review.

The setting is available in the AMD control panel display settings section as shown above. It is referred to in their software as “color temperature control” on the right hand side. This is usually defaulted to ‘disabled’ which is where you want it for sRGB emulation, but you normally have to enable and then disable it for it to kick in. In doing so you can normally see a noticeable change in the vividness of the red colours on this software on the sliders etc, giving you a visual indication that the screen has reverted from its native wide gamut mode to the AMD graphics card enabled sRGB emulation. Note that in older AMD graphics drivers there was a ‘Colour Temperature’ toggle that could be set to ‘Automatic’ rather than the default ‘6500K’ to achieve sRGB emulation. The good thing about this graphics card mode is that it is activated at a system level and so will apply to all applications, games and movies. It’s a simple and useful way to force an sRGB emulation even where you either can’t calibrate the screen yourself or where there is no useable or flexible sRGB emulation mode offered on the display.

One thing to be mindful of is that you don’t want to use both the screen sRGB mode and the graphics card sRGB mode. What you do there is restrict the gamut on the display to sRGB first of all, but the graphics card still reads the EDID info which lists the wide gamut mode and adjusts things from there. You end up double-correcting and reducing the gamut too far as below:

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Dr Pan: Hello, Greg. TFT LCD module is one of the best LCD technology. We can simply consider it as TFT+LCD+LED backlight, and monochrome LCD module consists of LCD+LED backlight. An image on an LCD we can see is composed of pixels. TFT is the abbreviation for thin film transistor and it controls the R, G, B colors of each pixel respectively on the surface of LCD.

TFT LCD is a high standard product and it is not well customized as monochrome LCD. But still, it has a variety of options to meet the customers’ requirements.The sizes range from 1.44 inch to 130.0 inch;

Crystalfontz America is the leading supplier of LCD, TFT, OLED and ePaper display modules and accessories. We specialize in providing our customers the very best in display products, cables and connectors.

In addition to our large catalog of displays, we offer LCD development kits, breakout boards, cables, ZIF connectors and all of the LCD software and drivers you need to develop your product or project. We are located in the U.S. so we can get product to you fast!

One of best advantages of Flatscreen LCD displays is the small footprint they take up on a desk. With stands that need not be more than abut 6" deep the space saving is significant. In the case of the 570S TFT those space saving features can be extended even further. With the panel being no more than 2.5" thick, and thanks largely to a removable stand, this display can be hung on a wall or even paced in a drawer.

The provided display driver example code is designed to work with Microchip, however it is generic enough to work with other micro-controllers. The code includes display reset sequence, initialization and example PutPixel() function. Keep the default values for all registers in the ILI9341, unless changed by the example code provided.

Note that the WR pin becomes the D/CX signal in serial mode. CS is used to initiate a data transfer by pulling it low. At the end of the data transfer, pull the CS pin high to complete the transaction. The timing diagram indicates that you can pull the CS pin high in between the command byte and data bytes within a transfer, but it is unlikely needed if the display is the only device on the SPI bus. To keep things simple, we suggest to leave it low during the entire transaction.

The colour is correct so your screen appears to be working for writes. What is not working properly? Post a picture of the back of the display and a link to the sellers website if you need more help.

A thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD) is a variant of a liquid-crystal display that uses thin-film-transistor technologyactive matrix LCD, in contrast to passive matrix LCDs or simple, direct-driven (i.e. with segments directly connected to electronics outside the LCD) LCDs with a few segments.

In February 1957, John Wallmark of RCA filed a patent for a thin film MOSFET. Paul K. Weimer, also of RCA implemented Wallmark"s ideas and developed the thin-film transistor (TFT) in 1962, a type of MOSFET distinct from the standard bulk MOSFET. It was made with thin films of cadmium selenide and cadmium sulfide. The idea of a TFT-based liquid-crystal display (LCD) was conceived by Bernard Lechner of RCA Laboratories in 1968. In 1971, Lechner, F. J. Marlowe, E. O. Nester and J. Tults demonstrated a 2-by-18 matrix display driven by a hybrid circuit using the dynamic scattering mode of LCDs.T. Peter Brody, J. A. Asars and G. D. Dixon at Westinghouse Research Laboratories developed a CdSe (cadmium selenide) TFT, which they used to demonstrate the first CdSe thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD).active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AM LCD) using CdSe TFTs in 1974, and then Brody coined the term "active matrix" in 1975.high-resolution and high-quality electronic visual display devices use TFT-based active matrix displays.

The liquid crystal displays used in calculators and other devices with similarly simple displays have direct-driven image elements, and therefore a voltage can be easily applied across just one segment of these types of displays without interfering with the other segments. This would be impractical for a large display, because it would have a large number of (color) picture elements (pixels), and thus it would require millions of connections, both top and bottom for each one of the three colors (red, green and blue) of every pixel. To avoid this issue, the pixels are addressed in rows and columns, reducing the connection count from millions down to thousands. The column and row wires attach to transistor switches, one for each pixel. The one-way current passing characteristic of the transistor prevents the charge that is being applied to each pixel from being drained between refreshes to a display"s image. Each pixel is a small capacitor with a layer of insulating liquid crystal sandwiched between transparent conductive ITO layers.

The circuit layout process of a TFT-LCD is very similar to that of semiconductor products. However, rather than fabricating the transistors from silicon, that is formed into a crystalline silicon wafer, they are made from a thin film of amorphous silicon that is deposited on a glass panel. The silicon layer for TFT-LCDs is typically deposited using the PECVD process.

Polycrystalline silicon is sometimes used in displays requiring higher TFT performance. Examples include small high-resolution displays such as those found in projectors or viewfinders. Amorphous silicon-based TFTs are by far the most common, due to their lower production cost, whereas polycrystalline silicon TFTs are more costly and much more difficult to produce.

The twisted nematic display is one of the oldest and frequently cheapest kind of LCD display technologies available. TN displays benefit from fast pixel response times and less smearing than other LCD display technology, but suffer from poor color reproduction and limited viewing angles, especially in the vertical direction. Colors will shift, potentially to the point of completely inverting, when viewed at an angle that is not perpendicular to the display. Modern, high end consumer products have developed methods to overcome the technology"s shortcomings, such as RTC (Response Time Compensation / Overdrive) technologies. Modern TN displays can look significantly better than older TN displays from decades earlier, but overall TN has inferior viewing angles and poor color in comparison to other technology.

Most TN panels can represent colors using only six bits per RGB channel, or 18 bit in total, and are unable to display the 16.7 million color shades (24-bit truecolor) that are available using 24-bit color. Instead, these panels display interpolated 24-bit color using a dithering method that combines adjacent pixels to simulate the desired shade. They can also use a form of temporal dithering called Frame Rate Control (FRC), which cycles between different shades with each new frame to simulate an intermediate shade. Such 18 bit panels with dithering are sometimes advertised as having "16.2 million colors". These color simulation methods are noticeable to many people and highly bothersome to some.gamut (often referred to as a percentage of the NTSC 1953 color gamut) are also due to backlighting technology. It is not uncommon for older displays to range from 10% to 26% of the NTSC color gamut, whereas other kind of displays, utilizing more complicated CCFL or LED phosphor formulations or RGB LED backlights, may extend past 100% of the NTSC color gamut, a difference quite perceivable by the human eye.

In 2004, Hydis Technologies Co., Ltd licensed its AFFS patent to Japan"s Hitachi Displays. Hitachi is using AFFS to manufacture high end panels in their product line. In 2006, Hydis also licensed its AFFS to Sanyo Epson Imaging Devices Corporation.

A technology developed by Samsung is Super PLS, which bears similarities to IPS panels, has wider viewing angles, better image quality, increased brightness, and lower production costs. PLS technology debuted in the PC display market with the release of the Samsung S27A850 and S24A850 monitors in September 2011.

TFT dual-transistor pixel or cell technology is a reflective-display technology for use in very-low-power-consumption applications such as electronic shelf labels (ESL), digital watches, or metering. DTP involves adding a secondary transistor gate in the single TFT cell to maintain the display of a pixel during a period of 1s without loss of image or without degrading the TFT transistors over time. By slowing the refresh rate of the standard frequency from 60 Hz to 1 Hz, DTP claims to increase the power efficiency by multiple orders of magnitude.

Due to the very high cost of building TFT factories, there are few major OEM panel vendors for large display panels. The glass panel suppliers are as follows:

External consumer display devices like a TFT LCD feature one or more analog VGA, DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort interface, with many featuring a selection of these interfaces. Inside external display devices there is a controller board that will convert the video signal using color mapping and image scaling usually employing the discrete cosine transform (DCT) in order to convert any video source like CVBS, VGA, DVI, HDMI, etc. into digital RGB at the native resolution of the display panel. In a laptop the graphics chip will directly produce a signal suitable for connection to the built-in TFT display. A control mechanism for the backlight is usually included on the same controller board.

The low level interface of STN, DSTN, or TFT display panels use either single ended TTL 5 V signal for older displays or TTL 3.3 V for slightly newer displays that transmits the pixel clock, horizontal sync, vertical sync, digital red, digital green, digital blue in parallel. Some models (for example the AT070TN92) also feature input/display enable, horizontal scan direction and vertical scan direction signals.

New and large (>15") TFT displays often use LVDS signaling that transmits the same contents as the parallel interface (Hsync, Vsync, RGB) but will put control and RGB bits into a number of serial transmission lines synchronized to a clock whose rate is equal to the pixel rate. LVDS transmits seven bits per clock per data line, with six bits being data and one bit used to signal if the other six bits need to be inverted in order to maintain DC balance. Low-cost TFT displays often have three data lines and therefore only directly support 18 bits per pixel. Upscale displays have four or five data lines to support 24 bits per pixel (truecolor) or 30 bits per pixel respectively. Panel manufacturers are slowly replacing LVDS with Internal DisplayPort and Embedded DisplayPort, which allow sixfold reduction of the number of differential pairs.

The bare display panel will only accept a digital video signal at the resolution determined by the panel pixel matrix designed at manufacture. Some screen panels will ignore the LSB bits of the color information to present a consistent interface (8 bit -> 6 bit/color x3).

With analogue signals like VGA, the display controller also needs to perform a high speed analog to digital conversion. With digital input signals like DVI or HDMI some simple reordering of the bits is needed before feeding it to the rescaler if the input resolution doesn"t match the display panel resolution.

Kawamoto, H. (2012). "The Inventors of TFT Active-Matrix LCD Receive the 2011 IEEE Nishizawa Medal". Journal of Display Technology. 8 (1): 3–4. Bibcode:2012JDisT...8....3K. doi:10.1109/JDT.2011.2177740. ISSN 1551-319X.

Brody, T. Peter; Asars, J. A.; Dixon, G. D. (November 1973). "A 6 × 6 inch 20 lines-per-inch liquid-crystal display panel". 20 (11): 995–1001. Bibcode:1973ITED...20..995B. doi:10.1109/T-ED.1973.17780. ISSN 0018-9383.

K. H. Lee; H. Y. Kim; K. H. Park; S. J. Jang; I. C. Park & J. Y. Lee (June 2006). "A Novel Outdoor Readability of Portable TFT-LCD with AFFS Technology". SID Symposium Digest of Technical Papers. AIP. 37 (1): 1079–82. doi:10.1889/1.2433159. S2CID 129569963.

Kim, Sae-Bom; Kim, Woong-Ki; Chounlamany, Vanseng; Seo, Jaehwan; Yoo, Jisu; Jo, Hun-Je; Jung, Jinho (15 August 2012). "Identification of multi-level toxicity of liquid crystal display wastewater toward Daphnia magna and Moina macrocopa". Journal of Hazardous Materials. Seoul, Korea; Laos, Lao. 227–228: 327–333. doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2012.05.059. PMID 22677053.

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