Are flatpanels still a step back?

[Akyhne]

It was originally my intension to reply here, but my answer developed a bit

 

Not an IPS panel, but I started overclocking my 6 year old Samsung BX2450 a little more than a year ago. It can manage 72 Hz (Nvidia) and that makes a HUGE difference in a game like Rocket League.

 

As I work a lot with graphics, I would love an IPS panel. But I also occasionally game and it is a demand from me, that the monitor can go above 60 Hz in full resolution, either by default or by overclocking.

I really feel that the monitor manufactors are letting us down! Back in the 90's, I had a 15" Eizo Flexscan that could do 85 Hz at highest resolution and 120 Hz at the next highest. When we got flatpanels, it was said all above 60 Hz was a total overkill and not detectable to the human eye. But it has been approved again and again, that this is not the case!

 

And it is really nice that you today can buy 144 Hz gaming monitors and above, but what about the rest of us? Why not set a new standard, like 75 Hz or 85 Hz?? Sure, we get larger panels and higher resolutions and that is a sweet thing.

As a side note, most 144 Hz (and above) gaming monitors I have seen, can only run 144 Hz under very specific conditions and only at the highest resolution.

 

How would people react if Nvidia and AMD one day suddently announced that a new standard would be implemented in graphics, promising incredible picture quality in gaming etc. but the technique could only run at 60 FPS max for the next many years, no matter the power of your PC? And that this was your only choice of gaming?

This is what they did with monitors!!

Sure, in the beginning, the technique in flatpanels was new and in their infancy, it was an early stage. But the 144 Hz panels shows the technique is there, even with some new IPS gaming monitors!

 

I would really like to see Linus adressing this issue and it would also be nice to see some overclocking guides of flatpanels. Which panels can be overclocked and how much!

 

Give us 75 or 85 Hz standard monitors NOW!! Or what is your opinion?

[Enderman]

There are plenty of 75hz and 120hz and 144hz and 165hz and 240hz monitors.

You just need to look for them and pay more for them.

The large majority of people doing web browsing and writing documents are fine with 60Hz, but nobody is limiting you to 60hz.

[Akyhne]

5 minutes ago, Enderman said:

There are plenty of 75hz and 120hz and 144hz and 165hz and 240hz monitors.

You just need to look for them and pay more for them.

The large majority of people doing web browsing and writing documents are fine with 60Hz, but nobody is limiting you to 60hz.

I wouldn't eaxctly say plenty! Yes, a search gives me 134 results, but only 9 of them are below 300$.

If I narrow my search to something usefull, like min. 1920 * 1080 and minimum 24", I get 52 results. And only 10 monitors below 400$

 

Choosing all but TN panels, I get 16 results, the cheapest costs 580$!! Not exactly "plenty" or what could be called a standard cheap monitor.

 

And what I'm really asking for, is the standard of 60 Hz to be raised, at least for anything but the cheapest monitors.

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, Akyhne said:

I wouldn't eaxctly say plenty! Yes, a search gives me 134 results, but only 9 of them are below 300$.

If I narrow my search to something usefull, like min. 1920 * 1080 and minimum 24", I get 52 results. And only 10 monitors below 400$

 

Choosing all but TN panels, I get 16 results, the cheapest costs 580$!! Not exactly "plenty" or what could be called a standard cheap monitor.

 

And what I'm really asking for, is the standard of 60 Hz to be raised, at least for anything but the cheapest monitors.

When 99% of the world's population is fine with 60hz then the standard will not be raised.

If you have higher standards, then you pay more.

That's how the world works.

[Akyhne]

4 minutes ago, Enderman said:

When 99% of the world's population is fine with 60hz then the standard will not be raised.

If you have higher standards, then you pay more.

That's how the world works.

I don't agree that people are fine with it! A lot of people working full time behind a monitor on a daily basis, struggles with headaches etc. In the old CRT days, it was clearly visible that any monitor flickered at 60 Hz, yet nothing was really done about it.

Now we have TNT panels that do not flicker so bad, but they still flicker!

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, Akyhne said:

I don't agree that people are fine with it! A lot of people working full time behind a monitor on a daily basis, struggles with headaches etc. In the old CRT days, it was clearly visible that any monitor flickered at 60 Hz, yet nothing was really done about it.

Now we have TNT panels that do not flicker so bad, but they still flicker!

That has nothing to do with it being 60Hz, that's called PWM backlight strobing.

It is a dimming problem not a framerate problem.

[Akyhne]

10 minutes ago, Enderman said:

That has nothing to do with it being 60Hz, that's called PWM backlight strobing.

It is a dimming problem not a framerate problem.

Well, that's not the only reason. And that's why high end and graphics and professional monitors have a high (slow) refresh/respons rate.

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, Akyhne said:

Well, that's not the only reason. And that's why high end and graphics and professional monitors have a high (slow) refresh/respons rate.

What are you talking about??

[Vantage9]

11 minutes ago, Akyhne said:

Well, that's not the only reason. And that's why high end and graphics and professional monitors have a high (slow) refresh/respons rate.

You need to read the FAQ linked here thoroughly.  The majority of your comments are all myths that have been debunked or explained in ways you clearly haven't learned about yet.

 

In summary, the CRTs flickered and had issues that are entirely different than the ones that modern panels have.  "Flatpanel" is industry branding that doesn't mean anything.  The original "flatpanels" were mostly Plasma screens, and thus had VERY different technology than what's in current LCD/LED panels.   This is a VERY VERY complicated topic that you have oversimplified in the worst way.

 

[Akyhne]

4 hours ago, Vantage9 said:

You need to read the FAQ linked here thoroughly.  The majority of your comments are all myths that have been debunked or explained in ways you clearly haven't learned about yet.

 

I've read a lot about it in the past from large monitor manufactures like Eizo, Samsung etc. I can't say that I'm up to date about the newest developement. And the technique behind monitors isn't really the thing I want to debate. None of us can be experts, as various manufactures of monitors use very different techniques.

 

So I want to get back to the debate about the 60 Hz issue. It has been a sort of the standard for decades, being probably the only thing in computers, not being developed or pushed forward. And there are clear benefits to raise this number even to just 75 Hz.

[Glenwing]

CRTs only illuminate one line at a time (well, one pixel actually), they don't maintain the brightness of the whole screen. As soon as the electron gun moves to the next line, the previous line starts to fade. So in a CRT at any given moment, most of the screen is black. Only the line of pixels currently being drawn, and the few previous lines (which are in various states of partially-fading out) are illuminated. So flickering is inherent in CRT displays. For this reason, CRTs need to operate at 75 Hz or 85 Hz or higher to really avoid flickering, as it is quite visible when flickering at 60 Hz.

 

So just to be clear, it is 60 Hz flickering light that causes problems, not 60 fps video.

 

In LCDs, the screen is updated one line at a time, but every line on the screen is maintained at full open, allowing light to pass though. The pixels are maintained in the open state by a grid of capacitors for each pixel. This is what is known as an Active-Matrix TFT LCD, the "active" meaning there are capacitors holding open all pixels at all times. Since this is the case, it does not matter what framerate the video is being displayed at. The pixels do not fade to black at the end of every frame, so any flicker on an LCD monitor does not come from the LCD panel itself. Changing the rate at which the LCD updates its images will not change the rate of flickering on an LCD monitor.

 

Flicker on LCD monitors comes from the light source used by LCDs, like the CCFL backlights used in original "LCD" monitors, and PWM-driven LED backlights used in cheaper "LED" displays today, but the pixels on the LCD are maintained open at all times, so the flickering has nothing to do with the LCD panel or the images on the panel. It's just whatever frequency the light source is flickering at, typically 180 Hz or 240 Hz (the PWM frequency of a backlight on most monitors). The 60 Hz refresh rate of the images on the monitor does not affect flicker in any way, and changing the refresh rate to 75 Hz or 85 Hz won't change any flickering, because the screen isn't what's flickering in the first place, but the light source.

 

Since the refresh rate of the screen on LCDs isn't tied to flickering anymore, there is no longer any need to standardize around 75 Hz or 85 Hz to avoid flickering, we just need something which will be provide smooth video, and 60 Hz is sufficient for that purpose for general home or office displays, and TVs.

 

And just to clear up some terminology, we're talking about the transition from CRTs to plasma/LCD. Flatscreen just means the glass of the screen is flat, rather than convex like older CRTs (or concave, with curved monitors today). There are flatscreen CRTs too.

 

 

[Akyhne]

2 hours ago, Glenwing said:

CRTs only illuminate one line at a time (well, one pixel actually)...

 

On a 60 Hz monitor, you have a trailing of the mouse as well as well as when scrolling a document or a webpage the text sort of flickers. Issues you didn't have on old CRT monitors running high refreshing.

 

Quote

 

And just to clear up some terminology, we're talking about the transition from CRTs to plasma/LCD. Flatscreen just means the glass of the screen is flat, rather than convex like older CRTs (or concave, with curved monitors today). There are flatscreen CRTs too.

 

 

I used the term flatpanel. I don't know if that is the same as a flatscreen. Then it's my bad. In my native language, a flatpanel is excactly what it says - a modern, flat non-CRT TV or monitor.

[Glenwing]

5 minutes ago, Akyhne said:

On a 60 Hz monitor, you have a trailing of the mouse as well as well as when scrolling a document or a webpage the text sort of flickers. Issues you didn't have on old CRT monitors running high refreshing.

That's due to a slow pixel response time, when you scroll, the text has moved to a different part of the screen, and if those pixels switch slowly then it may take a moment before the text appears at the new location.