monitors

[Herbert]

I am newbie, so be patient.

I am seeing monitors in stores which are called LCD (liquid crystal display), which when I look at them more closely, appear to TFT (thin film transistor). This seems to be evident in both the viewing angle, brightnes, and the lack of requirement of either back or front lighting. When I've asked sales people in both store and catatalog environments (tiger direct), I am told that they are both the same thing! Where am I going wrong?

Thanks

[Google]

[Troy]

I have no clue whatsoever on this one...........ummm anyone?
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[Rhino]

www.computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/154532.html

Not exactly a hard topic to find info on. This was the first result from Google when searching for "LCD vs. TFT"

Herbert, I realize that you are a 'newb', but it probably would have been quicker for you to type it in Google than post the question here.

Regardless, now that I've looked it up, I can say that I have learned something today.
Now I can check that off my 'to-do list'

Rhino
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[Herbert]

Thank you, Rhino

This came about because, a few years ago I bought a "TFT" display notebook from IBM, and they succinctly pointed out the difference between what they called "thin film transistor" and "LCD". Maybe marketing.

And, I duly note your admonishment, and recognize that I am not qualitfied
to be on this forum. Won't happen again.

Thanks again,

Bye Bye

[[TN] Nathan]

No, the difference with Laptop displays is active and passive matrix. They are both TFT LCD's.
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[mogur]

Hey, Herbert. Please stick around. I followed a few links and learned a little about lcds that I didn't know before. Your question was concise, clear, and pointed. Like Rhino says, you can found out just about anything with enough time and patience by using Google, but forums such as this one is where google finds a lot of that information. Most links are just to someone's sales pitch. Rhino's link was to a forum. Doh, just because there is a lot of information on the internet, doesn't mean that we shouldn't discuss it here. And a belated welcome to you, too.

In the early days of notebooks, lcds were the passive type where a matrix of lcd pixels were driven by two plates of wire, one for the horizontal and one for the vertical, with the liquid crystals sandwiched between the two plates. The pixels needed to be refreshed over several cycles, limiting the response time and producing less than bright images. Trying to brighten things up, there was a flurry of twisted nematic and super-twisted nematic displays for awhile, but they were still passive displays.

Tft, you probably know by now, puts the controlling electronics right in the sandwich of display plates, reducing the slur of movement by speeding up the response, and brightening the image with a fluorescent backlight. This is where your IBM marketing guy started bragging about the difference between "lcd" and "tft". Obviously, he wasn't an EE. They are both lcd displays, of course. What he was trying to brag up was the fact that tft is an active display, as opposed to a passive one.

Plasma displays are an active matrix of fluoresent light excited phosphoresence, like a crt tube, and you are looking directly at the emitting light. They are ahead of lcds right now in price and performance for large format displays, but lcds are catching up fast. Plasmas are bright with high contrast, cheaper to build in large sizes, but have a shortened lifespan due to the fluorescent light source, and are limited in resolution. Lcds will reach 60" in size in a few years, will get cheaper to build, and have a much lower power consumption, but may not catch up in brightness, contrast, and range of viewing angle. We'll see.

[Herbert]

Thanks, Mogur

Though my experence with computers goes to the old DEC 1100, (you had to boot it up by punching a binary code with a row of switches) it was limited to testing and computing. I really don't have alot of experence with the net etc. I have fond also that when I put a subject into a browser, I am usaully end up in someones catalog, or store. Tkat is why I decided to try approaching forums. I simply didn't know the order of acendency.

I appreciate amount and excellent information I received from so many people. And, thanks for the info on plazma display. I was wondering what that was all about.

Thank Again

[DeepFreeze]

WELCOME to the forums. Id be happy to help with any reasonble questions you have.
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