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As a former epileptic, the strobing that comes with CRTs is something i’m happy to be rid of. It wasn’t something I could see so much as perceive, but it’s a fe

As a former epileptic, the strobing that comes with CRTs is something i’m happy to be rid of. It wasn’t something I could see so much as perceive, but it’s a feeling my body still remembers. That said modern monitor tech still has big problems. Quantum dot has a chance of shifting the field in the next 10 years but right now any monitor effectively excels at only 2-3 of: color gamut, color accuracy, pixel density, refresh rate, response time. HDR is a whole different topic that the industry hasn’t figured out.

simcop2387 6y ago
I'm curious if you've ever had the chance to see an oled monitor in person and if it reacts similarly to a CRT for you. They have a global refresh/flash instead of one that's rasterizing so it might not have the same effect and they don't have the same phosphor fade of a CRT either. I'm also curious about the LCD monitors that strobe the backlight to reduce apparent motion blur (basically they shut the backlight off during the time that each pixel is fading between colors in each frame).
- liquidise 6y ago
  I own a 77” LG oled that I positively love and have not noticed any strobing. I’m also no longer epileptic, so maybe that also plays a role?
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    It might be a much higher frequency which you're not sensitive to. My Galaxy S5 had 240 Hz. You can figure it out using a digital camera. Set the shutter speed to e.g. 1/10s, and take a picure of a bright spot displayed on a dark background while moving the camere so you get "motion blur", and count the number of times the object repeats. Multiply by 10 and you have your refresh rate.
bleepblorp 6y ago
The problem with monitors is much more with the display industry's preference for finding new ways to scam customers instead of commercializing display technology improvements. The history of LCD monitors and TVs is a history of the industry increasing prices while finding new corners to cut by removing functionality that reviewers and users didn't know they needed to test for. When users first realized that IPS was vastly superior to TN for most purposes, the industry responded by making low-quality 6-bit IPS panels, which the industry happily described as 'IPS' without disclosing that the panels can't display color gradients--and often flickered badly due to FRC. Early 6-bit panels were worse than TN in everyday use. 6-bit IPS is now essentially unavoidable in smaller, non-4K, screens. Another fun scam the display industry concocted was releasing one production run of good quality 8-bit IPS monitors, to get positive professional reviews and user word of mouth, then making subsequent production runs under the same model number with 6-bit fraud-IPS, PVA, or even TN panels. The low-frequency PWM backlighting scam (which probably saves all of ten cents per display) is now known well enough that reviewers will test for it, but the industry has developed other ways of preventing users from purchasing good-quality hardware at a fair price. Dynamic contrast is a particularly insidious problem. This piece of joy from the display industry changes the backlight intensity and RGB pixel values depending on screen contents. As a result, the color tint of the display changes depending on screen contents. These constant color shifts make dynamic contrast monitors unusable for even non-professional design/photo/video work and prevents color calibration entirely. This technology is even applied, with no user option to disable it, to monitors sold as sRGB pre-calibrated and marketed towards mid-range color work. Officially, dynamic contrast is intended to save energy, but the actual intent is likely to force people who want stable colors to buy professional displays at ten times the price. A new scam that's emerged since the start of the pandemic is color gamut restriction; it's now very difficult to get displays--especially laptop displays--that support more than 50% of the sRGB gamut. Displaying actual red is now something the industry has decided to exclusively paywall into professional panels targeted at the design market. The problem with displays isn't technology; it's an industry that's built on the premise of ripping off consumers.

simcop2387 6y ago

I'm curious if you've ever had the chance to see an oled monitor in person and if it reacts similarly to a CRT for you. They have a global refresh/flash instead of one that's rasterizing so it might not have the same effect and they don't have the same phosphor fade of a CRT either. I'm also curious about the LCD monitors that strobe the backlight to reduce apparent motion blur (basically they shut the backlight off during the time that each pixel is fading between colors in each frame).

liquidise 6y ago
I own a 77” LG oled that I positively love and have not noticed any strobing. I’m also no longer epileptic, so maybe that also plays a role?
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  It might be a much higher frequency which you're not sensitive to. My Galaxy S5 had 240 Hz. You can figure it out using a digital camera. Set the shutter speed to e.g. 1/10s, and take a picure of a bright spot displayed on a dark background while moving the camere so you get "motion blur", and count the number of times the object repeats. Multiply by 10 and you have your refresh rate.

bleepblorp 6y ago

The problem with monitors is much more with the display industry's preference for finding new ways to scam customers instead of commercializing display technology improvements. The history of LCD monitors and TVs is a history of the industry increasing prices while finding new corners to cut by removing functionality that reviewers and users didn't know they needed to test for. When users first realized that IPS was vastly superior to TN for most purposes, the industry responded by making low-quality 6-bit IPS panels, which the industry happily described as 'IPS' without disclosing that the panels can't display color gradients--and often flickered badly due to FRC. Early 6-bit panels were worse than TN in everyday use. 6-bit IPS is now essentially unavoidable in smaller, non-4K, screens. Another fun scam the display industry concocted was releasing one production run of good quality 8-bit IPS monitors, to get positive professional reviews and user word of mouth, then making subsequent production runs under the same model number with 6-bit fraud-IPS, PVA, or even TN panels. The low-frequency PWM backlighting scam (which probably saves all of ten cents per display) is now known well enough that reviewers will test for it, but the industry has developed other ways of preventing users from purchasing good-quality hardware at a fair price. Dynamic contrast is a particularly insidious problem. This piece of joy from the display industry changes the backlight intensity and RGB pixel values depending on screen contents. As a result, the color tint of the display changes depending on screen contents. These constant color shifts make dynamic contrast monitors unusable for even non-professional design/photo/video work and prevents color calibration entirely. This technology is even applied, with no user option to disable it, to monitors sold as sRGB pre-calibrated and marketed towards mid-range color work. Officially, dynamic contrast is intended to save energy, but the actual intent is likely to force people who want stable colors to buy professional displays at ten times the price. A new scam that's emerged since the start of the pandemic is color gamut restriction; it's now very difficult to get displays--especially laptop displays--that support more than 50% of the sRGB gamut. Displaying actual red is now something the industry has decided to exclusively paywall into professional panels targeted at the design market. The problem with displays isn't technology; it's an industry that's built on the premise of ripping off consumers.