the state of the LCD tech

[matt3o]

okay I want to share with you some of my frustration with LCD panels.

In the last 12 months I had to purchase the following 27 inch monitors:

- Viewsonic VP2770-LED (very good color uniformity)
- Samsung S27A850D (pure crap)
- 2x HP ZR2740w (honest)
- Dell U2713HM (half crap)

None of them have ZERO pixel defects. They all have at least 2 stuck or dead pixels around. Thanks to the high res the pixels are pretty small and not very distracting, but still.

Other than that you sometimes get bad backlight bleeding too.

I've been able to replace most of the defective panels with a new one at zero cost... but again the new panels still have dead pixels or other annoying defects (such as not uniform colors). So if you change panel you actually risk to get a new one that is worse than the one you had.

They are all monitor in the 580-780 range, not really entry level, I'm wondering if the high end monitors (+1000euros) have the same issues but I guess this technology is flawed by default.

What's your experience? Is this a problem of the 27"? I had a couple of 24" that were perfect, so maybe we are not ready for the 2560x1440 resolution?

[Muirium]

Retina 24 and 27" is supposedly on the way, with four times that resolution. And surely the new Mac Pro has the graphics power to handle a few of those. By that point, stuck pixels may be invisible. I'd give it a few months to see what Apple does. Then wince at the price and see what everyone else has cooking in response!

[matt3o]

current gen mobile GPU can hardly handle the 15" retina, I don't think retina 24 or 27 will be out anytime soon or at least until Apple can make them work on laptop (which is their core business on the PC branch)

[Muirium]

True. Intel's backward mobile graphics is the worst part of Apple's laptops. We're still in early days for retina on the MacBooks.

But desktops are a whole other story. Apple makes so much sheer area of retina screens now (hundreds of millions of iPads and iPhones) that an expensive experiment, like the new Mac Pro itself, makes sense. There are enough big spenders to buy a several thousand dollar display for their just as expensive new computers. Like there was when Apple did the first 30 inch screen too. They still do Macs, fortunately! All this iOS stuff and the proliferation of laptops distracts from the fact the desktop Mac is still a profitable little gem and a great niche for future experiments.

Anyway, once those retina screens show up, at whatever size, current gear's prices will be forced down. It's a marketing thing. I would not buy screens just before a major tech refresh, even if I'm uninterested in the new stuff!

[mbodrov]

I went through 5 or 6 expensive IPS monitors (Dell, HP, NEC) all of which I eventually had to return because of defects in the LCD panel. Dead pixels, color tint, thermal ghosting, you name it.

Now I have settled on using a Samsung home TV, 40 inch S-PVA, as my desktop monitor, and couldn't have been happier. Of course technical image quality is not quite the same, but for the cost (200EUR used) it's very hard to beat. The resolution is only 1920x1080, but I actually like the large pixels, though I wish it was 1920x1200 like my IPS monitors.

[Peter]

CRT still RULES !!!!!

[IvanIvanovich]

I got a $300 Shimian 1440p 27". Zero stuck or dead pixels, no backlight bleeds, and good enough color seeing as how you can't adjust it except on the gpu/os end. It's a very good display for the money. Most of it's 'problems' are in the fit and finish area, especially the rather bad stand. Stand problem is not too difficult to resolve for another whatever you want to spend on a better one.
There are some seller that offer perfect pixels guarantee, so you might look into that, or otherwise deal with buying at a physical store that has similar return policy for quicker exchanges. Spending more can't ensure you perfect, unless they do such grantee and testing before sale.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Depends on the defect. My 5-year-old 20" LG S-IPS recently developed a stuck red subpixel. It's so insignificant that, until I spotted this topic, I'd forgotten about it. I did get a couple of mura—tiny grey smudges inside the panel—from new that occasionally annoy me when I'm retouching a photo and I somehow can't erase the mark …

What I have noticed is a horrible decline in the quality of Dell office TN panels. A few years ago, they were so good that, unless you were doing colour-intensive work, they were more than adequate for anyone. Current ones are so bad that you get horizontal colour shifts when looking directly at the screen. Dell used to offer an affordable screen with good viewing angle, and now that's gone. I am genuinely shocked that even decent quality TN of all things is now too expensive for Dell — how can LCD technology have stalled so hard that we've replaced the last vestige of good TN with abhorrent TN, instead of good TN becoming the de facto affordable product? (Since we'd never get VA as the lowest grade)

I'm more annoyed about the death of 4:3 — I simply love 1600×1200 on desktops, and 4:3 on notebooks. Notebooks especially: why are we crippling them with ridiculously short displays? Screens have become the same sort of cruel, vicious joke as keyboards: a race to the bottom to ship the most spectacularly useless products to the consumer and business alike. (Apple at least are all eIPS now, but their keyboards suck more than everyone else's.)

As for TN/VA/IPS — how much longer do we have to wait for OLED? :°( I first read about that in 1995!!

[Muirium]

OLED marched off in a strange direction. These days it's the thing you'll find on (mostly Samsung) phones claiming to have a higher resolution than they do; thanks to a vile cost saving innovation called Pentile. It wrecks straight lines and text, but whoever looks at those, right?

[Wendell]

...annoyed about the death of 4:3 — I simply love 1600×1200 on desktops, and 4:3 on notebooks.

I still keep a decade-old Thinkpad in service because its keyboard and screen are much nicer than on any new notebook.

After my last frustrating episode with a 24" Dell IPS monitor, I looked again at old 4:3 monitors. They had even color and lighting, emitted less heat, had sturdier frames, and lasted much longer. When big widescreen monitors became popular, I felt I just had to have one, but now I find I'm quite happy with two 19" side by side. Where I am, at least, it's not hard to find a good deal on a used one, and you can still find many older models new.

[TheSoulhunter]

I use a old 24" Eizo and a newer 24" LED backlit Dell...

- Even tho the Eizo is like 6 years old, it clearly outperforms the Dell in color accuracy
- Neither of the two has uniform back-lighting (Clouding / Bright edges)
- Neither of the two can display deep blacks (No LCD can)

Seen some OLED screens which looked amazing, kinda like pro quality high gloss prints,
but they are super expensive, and there is still the aging problem (color balance changes over time).
I wish Sony would push this new LED panels (without LCD, just millions of LEDs) they demo'ed, awesome!

[matt3o]

I wish Sony would push this new LED panels (without LCD, just millions of LEDs) they demo'ed, awesome!

oh right I saw them last year at CES (or was it the year before?). They said they would be out in a couple of years (bullshits). That is definitely an interesting technology. Toshiba 10 years ago presented a similar concept (with tiny CRT, one per pixel) but was too expensive at the time.

Regarding LCD I'm fed up of shipping defective panels back just to get a similarly flawed monitor. Unless they are severely flawed (especially in backlight bleeding) I keep them. I understand that the technology suck.

[mbodrov]

I wish Sony would push this new LED panels (without LCD, just millions of LEDs) they demo'ed, awesome!

Samsung monitors with RGB LED backlighting made it as far as mass production several years ago: the XL series. However, their panels still had a LCD layer too. In practical use they were found to be plagued with many problems, the worst being the more-or-less random degradation of the individual LEDs over time. I understand that this problem still hasn't been solved, and with current technology, the only way to achieve a semblance of uniform color reproduction across the screen is to have a light-spreading layer in the pie. I wonder if Sony believes it has a new solution to this.

[Jmneuv]

I'll probably be trying buying a U2410 again when this one bites the dust; there's still no valid replacement for it.
Most LED monitors have PWM backlight which i don't want to expose myself to extensively, also 16:10 is being weeded out.. those :1 make all the difference.
Took me some time to wrestle the wide gamut but now i wouldn't want to miss it.

And yes i DO know the pains of returning shit panels, especially color variation green/pink tint clouds and the likes.

[002]

I also have a U2410 and it's been fine.
One thing I was wondering about it was is the screen supposed to be so easily pushed in? I mean, I only have to touch mine lightly and the screen goes in - especially down the bottom in the centre. I like the look of the Eizo monitors and I hear they are pretty decent but they are so expensive. Anyone got one? Thoughts on it?

[Compgeke]

As odd as it sounds, I'm still using my 2005-era Dell monitors. I can find them all the time for free to $10 or so, and they don't look half bad compared to most cheap monitors anyways. The only issue is one has a bit of screen burnin (not really burnin, but whatever), however that's my fault as I've had the same program on the screen for the last year and a half or so, and a constant title bar does cause that.

I also have a 16:10 laptop and 16:10 primary monitor. Even though 1440x900 doesn't seem like a lot, but compared to 1366x768 or 1280x800, it's amazing (especially on a 14" laptop).

[matt3o]

Most LED monitors have PWM backlight which i don't want to expose myself to extensively

please note that none of the above is PWM

[Muirium]

Pulse Width Modulation? Nah, you want Super Heterodyne.

[TheSoulhunter]

Toshiba 10 years ago presented a similar concept (with tiny CRT, one per pixel) but was too expensive at the time.

Oh yeah, SED/FED! Promising technology and also what I would have preferred (over LCD/Plasma/OLED/LED) for TVs and PC monitors (OLED is hard to beat for mobile devices like cameras or cell phones tho -> Small size + low power-consumption, and the short life-time doesn't matter as the life-cycle of mobile devices is kinda short anyway) but Canon and Sony (main devs iirc) both stopped development V_V

[TheSoulhunter]

I like the look of the Eizo monitors and I hear they are pretty decent but they are so expensive. Anyone got one? Thoughts on it?

I use a old 24" Eizo and a newer 24" LED backlit Dell...

- Even tho the Eizo is like 6 years old, it clearly outperforms the Dell in color accuracy

I also have a U2410 and it's been fine.
One thing I was wondering about it was is the screen supposed to be so easily pushed in? I mean, I only have to touch mine lightly and the screen goes in - especially down the bottom in the centre.

Same on mine...
I think its just the diffuser (textured plastic sheet in front of the panel).

[Broadmonkey]

This is why I have been holding off replacing my old Samsung 226CW, I hate it for it's bad colors and tendency to ghost, but every time I read a review of a new more or less affordable screen, with anything but TN panels, they suck in one way or another. Either they have horrible colors or have slow refresh rates/ghost and if not, they are plagued by backlight bleeding or some other deal breaker.
My dad still uses some old professional LaCie 22" CRT screens and they have amazing colors, refresh rate, no bloody backlight bleed or dead pixels. Just a shame they take up six times the space of his PC.

[matt3o]

indeed CRT was such a better technology. I don't want to be the "vinyl is so much better than mp3"-guy, but gosh this LCD really really suck.

[Halvar]

There may be problems with LCD technology, but CRTs are not the solution. Never am I going back to the blurry curved flickering radiating image of one of these energy-squandering old monstrums. My last CRT at work was a quite expensive 21" Eizo, and still the crisp sharpness and flat surface of the first LCD was a revelation compared to it. Not so much for graphics work and games, but certainly for anything text-related.

Web design and software development ... you could use an at least one point smaller font to be perfectly readable on LCDs in comparison to a CRT with the same pixel density.

I agree that it was a step back in colors at first, especially with TN monitors of course, but for me that never bothered me too much, and it became good enough for me with IPS (I'm using Dell UltraSharp IPS monitors now).

Quality issues with new models were much worse with CRTs than with LCDs if you were looking for the more sophisticated models. Common advice was that you should always test the very monitor you wanted to buy in the store and buy that one specimen that you had tested. For example, if the one you got was badly focused, there was nothing you could really do about it. Clouding, distortions, show images -- so many things could go wrong.

Pixel errors: I have been strangely lucky in this respect in relation to the fuzz people make about it. Out of the maybe 10 to 15 LCD monitors I have called my own so far (including laptops), only one or two had any pixel errors at all. I tend to not get the highest-resolution models though, but rather the mainstream tier, maybe it's worse with top-notch stuff or has become worse recently.

[matt3o]

I agree CRT era is ended, but LED is not the answer. I hope new technologies will catch up soon. I don't remember having so many troubles with CRT, even with entry level ones. Color accuracy, ghosting, backlight bleeding, cross hatching, PWM backlight, oh gosh... are you kidding me?

On regards of pixel errors. All 2560x1440 monitor I had (10) had at least a couple of dead pixels. Laptops and smaller screens are less prone to that lately.

[webwit]

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/06/20/ ... -you-crazy

LED PWM frequencies are FAR higher than the old CRT refresh rates.

[matt3o]

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/06/20/ ... -you-crazy

LED PWM frequencies are FAR higher than the old CRT refresh rates.

backlight on/off is not exactly the same thing as CRT refresh rate. this mildly explain the situation. But it is also true that depends on your sensitivity to the effect. For example I notice it a lot with peripheral vision (when I look at the center of a 27" the sides flicker)

[Muirium]

Among my various setups, I do actually still use a 21" CRT myself. Can't bear to throw the old bugger out. Literally… you could get a hernia off that thing. Plus buying LCDs does indeed seem a huge pain. I zero straight in on their flaws too.

The only LCD I have that isn't integrated into an Apple computer of some sort is a total turd. So the CRT lives on.

Pulse width brightness sounds a nightmare. CRT flicker was my bane, too. 120 Hz or nothing! But my photosensitivity has me using screens in the darkest 5% of their range most of the time anyway, where presumably a backlight will stutter the most! Maddening. It was always vice versa with CRTs, fortunately. Even 120 Hz gives me tingles at high power.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Wow. I thought I was a bit fussy for requiring CRTs to be 75 Hz, at which point the flicker went away. I do get slow flickering from my LCD at home sometimes — no idea why; I've seen it on old Dell TN screens too. I think I could just about pick up on the frame rate control of 6-bit Dell TN panels too: I'd see a subtle but clear shimmering across the panel when viewing the 2000/Server 2003 blue background. (At school I used to suffer from optical illusion effects from graph paper, in part because the retarded school staff bought grey graph paper, i.e. all the grid lines were the exact same grey shade as graphite pencil, so you couldn't ever see where you drew your axes)

LCD has the advantage of remaining consistent with age. The backlight dims and yellows, and that's it.

What's depressing about all the complaints in this topic is that none of it is any reflection on LCD as a technology. It's just an industry that cares nothing for the customer and a customer base that's altogether too stupid to figure out how much they're being screwed over. That's why screens are getting worse, not better. My screen at home is a five-year-old LG L2000CP, an unwanted, unloved, miserable creature (the same LG.display S-IPS panel was used in the hugely popular HP LP2065, which I have at work) — yet the backlight is even, colours are fantastic, can't fault it. (It has a few flaws inherent in the panel type, such as after images.) I just wish I hadn't mistakenly reset the usage counter >_<

CRT lovers obviously forget just how abominable cheap CRTs were. X-ray generation. Screens that would develop horrendous, incurable colour casts, like vivid pink or green. Distorted pictures that couldn't be corrected despite fiddling with the OSD for half an hour (remember your parallelogram/pincushion/barrel distortion/keystone/width/height … Yeah, the memories are flooding back to you now!) The need to manually degauss the screen after it got magnetised. Loud EHT arcing causing the image to temporary dim and shrink, making you jump. Poor EHT regulation leading to an image that changed with overall intensity. Fuzzy pictures. Loss of convergence. EHT fade — I replaced one CRT as it was fading so bad it was becoming hard to read, coupled with severe loss of focus. (It's hard to get 1152×864 out of 17" at the best of times; I got 1280×960 out of 17" on my Mac!) The need to extensively recalibrate the picture manually every time you ran a game in a different resolution — a massive horizontal position issue with severe internal reflection around the insides of the CRT after a resolution change may have been what killed my only good CRT: I was trying to get the image re-centred and the EHT promptly burnt itself out: I watched the picture turn brown and shrivel up and that was the end of it (along with a suitable burning smell).

Combined with the horrible weight and ridiculous bulk, I'd take even a cheap LCD over going back to CRT now. Grab a pre-2010 Dell display :)

[Muirium]

You're spot on Daniel about LCDs being a fine technology, ruined by the bean counters. The one in the retina iPad, for instance, is a gem and I'd adore 9 or 16 of those stitched together for a desktop display. That's pretty much what I expect from Apple late this year or next. For more $grand than people will inevitably shake an outraged and entitled stick at.

My old CRT is nothing on where modern displays should be, but it's the big old devil I know. Rock solid picture painstakingly adjusted to bearable proportions by me over half hours here and there for over a decade, for the single resolution I ever run it at; and a deeper black than any consumer grade LCD I've seen, which is vital given how dimly I choose to run it. People think I have my screens in some low power mode when they see them. Nope, I get after images and headaches if I push them to the top like most folk do. A story for the opthamologist. Don't even get me started on the egregious brightness wars of status lights…

From what I've heard, the smart display for movie watching and gaming is plasma. They're not nearly as crippled by burn in as they were in the past, and have come right down in price thanks to direct competition. Trouble is they're a bit of a dead end as a brand these days and selection isn't what it could be. Probably impossible to get anything with the pixel density you'd want from a desktop display as opposed to a screen for slouching back.

[matt3o]

I still have a CRT Nec Multisync and a CRT Sony (one of those used to be called "flat"). You can say what you want but they still look gorgeous... and they have 20-or-so-years. No ghosting. No halos. No bleeding.

I agree that ipad retina is a really amazing display, but we are not there yet. Also, would Apple ever stop making gorgeous monitors that you can only connect to ONE Mac?! Oh gosh, sometimes I hate that company.