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LCD TVs won’t see any further development
- noncoml 3y agoGrew up with CRTs giving me horrible headaches and LCDs was a breath of fresh air for my eyes. Headaches gone! Then came OLEDs and brought back headaches. Luckily Apple still sells the iPhone SE with LCD. I really don’t know what I will do once LCDs are gone.
- porphyra 3y agoI wonder why? With CRTs there is noticeable flickering but no such issue happens with OLEDs. Is it just the contrast ratio?
- kitsunesoba 3y agoNot entirely sure but I think OLED pixels modulate brightness with PWM, which causes high frequency (though invisible) flickering.
- murderberry 3y agoLCDs have PWM-dimmed backlights, so if your laptop isn't set to maximum brightness, you're probably staring at a flickering surface too. Perhaps a simpler explanation is just contrast? Both OLEDs and CRTs can produce much higher contrast than LCDs.
- fomine3 3y agoNo PWM is common for LCDs https://www.notebookcheck.net/PWM-Ranking-Notebooks-Smartphones-and-Tablets-with-PWM.163979.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/PWM-Ranking-Notebooks-Smartpho...
- xioxox 3y agoThe PWM frequency is typically much higher for LCDs than OLEDs, if it is used, and much less likely to be a problem.
- masswerk 3y agoRegarding CRT flicker: for monitors, you don't want to drive a CRT below 90Hz (120 Hz is pretty stable), even TVs were at the end 100Hz (refreshing frames multiple times). The problem was "cost effective" office PCs with graphics hardware just capable of 60Hz refresh, which isn't a great idea, unless you have a monochrome monitor with slow phosphor. (Meaning, this was just an abuse of technology – and workers.)
- toast0 3y ago> even TVs were at the end 100Hz (refreshing frames multiple times) Maybe in Europe? But 100Hz is a terrible thing to do with 60Hz signals. Possibly US bound HD CRT TVs did 120Hz? But I don't recall hearing about those ever.
- masswerk 3y agoYes, my experience was definitively European, as in PAL. It was rather neat, until the image panned… (The problem being, apparently you still have to alternate between fields in order to maintain the illusion of interlaced video, so you get an A-B-A-B C-D–C-D… sequence. Some attempts were made to improve the resulting interlace clash by comb filters, etc, but this only started to work somewhat properly, when the days of CRTs were already numbered.) I actually don't know if there were similar developments with 60Hz standards.
- blackoil 3y agoWhat about MicroLED? New Macs and iPad Pro use them.
- p1esk 3y agoYou mean MiniLED?
- Dylan16807 3y agoIn this situation microLED should be the same as OLED, also those don't use it.
- temikus 3y agoNot the OP but I am sensitive and sadly found the MiniLED to be unusable as well. Had to switch from a 15’ MBP to the low-cost 13” with the old-school 500nit display.
- exmadscientist 3y agoIs it OLED displays themselves that bother you, or the truly horrid subpixel arrangements they use on phones? I love my LG OLED TV, with a full matrix (RGBW at every pixel). Phones, using something like PenTile, usually have half the number of red and blue subpixels, and in funny arrangements at that. Phone OLED displays make my eyes hurt, especially when anything is scrolling.
- novok 3y agoIs that the same with iPhones too?
- Miraste 3y agoYes it is. Deranged subpixel arrangements aren't an inherent feature of OLEDs, but I believe they're easier to manufacture so they're used in everything. The only OLED product I remember having normal RGB stripe pixels was the original PSVR, and that was dropped for the PSVR 2. Samsung especially likes to mess with this, these days they are using triangular pixels for some reason.
- starky 3y agoPentile is a pox on the entire phone industry that they use to justify using crappy low resolution displays under the guise of something higher resolution. "1080p" Pentile is really like an 880p RGB matrix display.
- Dylan16807 3y agoSome OLEDs don't use PWM, and some PWM fast enough not to cause problems. Also badly driven LCD backlights can flicker badly too.
- Acrobatic_Road 3y agoI'm not sure how OLED can give you a headache, but not an LCD.
- noobermin 3y agoMy wife has issues with bright screens, for her, matte coatings/films are a lifesaver. Have you tried those?
- kitsunesoba 3y agoMakes sense, but I hope that there’s meaningful progress on microLEDs soon. While OLED burn-in has improved a lot, it’s still a concern for the lengths of time that people keep screens for… my 5 year old VA panel TV still looks identical to the day that it was unboxed after thousands of hours of usage at high brightness, and I’d hope any TV replacing it would be capable of the same or better. Same goes for monitors.
- porphyra 3y agomicroLEDs also have * better linearity * smaller size (that is, the light comes from a tiny pinpoint in the middle of the pixel rather than a whole rectangle being lit up). This actually helps make the display look a lot sharper.
- rsaxvc 3y agoYou don't want small pixels. This causes optical aliasing and associated problems. Edit: By small pixels I mean a low pixel aspect ratio(area of lit pixel vs total area per pixel). If you consider this as a DSP problem(instead of a time series problem, a brightness value over distance or angle), there's effectively no reconstruction low pass filter. You can think of small lit pixel area with larger distance between like zero padding. This can make some things appear sharper, but by doing so it'll appear less like the image source wants it to.
- H8crilA 3y agoNo, the perfect pixel is a sinc() function of appropriate bandwidth. A pixel of the form "dot with a dark area around it" is a better approximation of sinc() than pixel of the from "fill all the available space evenly". And it doesn't mean the bright part of a pixel should be as small as possible, no, it should be tuned for bandwidth. Even eye receptors (cones) approximate sinc() in the same fashion.
- rsaxvc 3y agoSure, but at least for RGB subpixel displays common to LCD TVs, each subpixel has neighboring dark-area not only in the form of the black matrix, but effectively also that of the two other colors.
- WalterBright 3y agoI want my entire desktop surface to be a display. 4*8 feet more or less. I also want a 0-width bezel, so they can be tiled seamlessly. Why? I want an entire wall to be a display. I want, I want, I want, ... :-)
- WalterBright 3y agoI also want my Roku box to be able to display PDF files. I'd even pay for it. and a pony.
- judge2020 3y agoI want my Roku box to play AAC.
- relyks 3y agoWhat's the use case for displaying PDF files on a Roku? You would really read documents on your TV? I'd be interested in developing that if there's a market
- WalterBright 3y agoI have an uncounted number of PDFs, easily in the many thousands. I'd like to lounge in my LazyBoy and read them. I'd like to read them while I do my exercises. I'd like read them while in bed and sick of watching TV. I'd upgrade to a 4K TV if I had a viewer for it. I'd pony(!) up $200 for an app that did that. I don't know if other people would, but I would. I find it strange that Roku comes with an app to play movie files, display jpgs, play song files, but it won't display a pdf. I've searched Roku for such an app, and googled for it, but came up empty.
- Stratoscope 3y agoWouldn't you want a portrait mode monitor for your PDFs? I read them on a 24" UHD portrait mode display. It is so nice to have the PDF page fill the display so I don't have to scroll within each page. Of course this doesn't solve the problem of reading them in bed! Or would it? At least in the LazyBoy you could have a portrait mode monitor on an Ergotron arm and that would work pretty nicely? I wrote about this in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36179132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36179132
- 111111IIIIIII 3y agoIt's amazing that pixel density has been stagnant since 2014, when the first 5k TV (low ppi) and 5k desktop displays (>200 ppi) were released. It's 2023 now and it still takes a kidney to get 5k >200 ppi, and we only recently got the 6k >200 ppi option for 2 kidneys. Pixel density, however, is stagnant. I expect the industry realizes 6k is basically the stopping point so they're intentionally approaching it very slowly. Edit: Updated with ppi specs to draw focus to pixel density of desktop displays.
- mattwad 3y agoWait, we've had 8k TVs since 2019: https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/electronics/8k-resolution https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/electronics/8k-resolutio.... It doesn't even seem that expensive: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-55-class-qn700b-neo-qled-8k-smart-tv/6517114.p?skuId=6517114 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-55-class-qn700b-neo-qle... (this is just the first result on Best Buy's site). Are we thinking of the same thing?
- 111111IIIIIII 3y agoI should have been more specific about pixel density. TVs have very low pixel density. I've updated my comment for more clarity about this.
- mattwad 3y agoah ok. thanks.. it is confusing
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agopixel density doesn't matter. what matters is anyway pixel density. your TV is 2x bigger than your monitor, but you sit at least 2x further away, so the angular density is the same
- nailk 3y ago"8k" name in this case is just a marketing. It's not 8k, it's 4230p only.
- LarsAlereon 3y agoWhile the headline implies it's talking about LCD displays, it actually refers to LCD panel technology. The innovation is in the backlight technology behind the LCD panel, so LCD displays still have an exciting future ahead of them.
- rocqua 3y agoI believe the point is that the main research is now on oled and micro-led. Those are truly LCD-less. Instead of having a backlight that is variously dimmed by an LCD panel, they have self emmisive pixels. Micro led truly aims to just have a single LED per (sub) pixel.
- beebeepka 3y agoI thought MicroLED was about per pixel backlight for good old LCD. Gonna hit wiki. Edit: it's not LCD hehe. I have memorized some incorrect info
- JoshTriplett 3y agoThat's "mini-LED". MicroLED has small enough LEDs to use the LEDs directly as the pixels.
- beebeepka 3y agoYou seem to be right. I don't have them too confused, though. There have been MiniLED display on the market for years, and they're all LCD
- emodendroket 3y agoI’d wager it’s going to take a lot to get to the point where a huge portion of customers aren’t satisfied with LCD TVs at their current level of capability, especially if prices are only going down.
- leptons 3y agoAgree. There's still plenty of people alive with 4k TVs today that remember when black and white broadcast CRT television was all there was.
- rsynnott 3y agoSure, but that’s not what this is about. This is essentially manufacturers saying “we’re going to stop trying to make LCDs better and concentrate on other technologies”.
- emodendroket 3y agoWell, according to the article they intend to continue making LCD TVs and you can expect them to get cheaper, so I expect them to have a long life as tried-and-true choices even if they're not being actively researched for improvement.
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- domador 3y agoWhat I'm mostly wondering these days is if anyone in any part of the display technology "stack" (so to speak) is working on improving the number of colors displayed to us by our screens. Or will we be limited to using 24-bit color forever (because it is "good enough")? 24-bit color is pretty good, mind you, yet there are everyday cases where we would appreciate the ability to view a more nuanced transition between adjacent colors on certain images and videos.
- rocqua 3y agoHDR content is pretty damn mainstream and uses 10 bits per channel for 30-bit color. Some variants can do 12 bits per channel, but I believe this isn't often used. Moreover, this content often comes with dynamic tone mapping to allow access to many more colors in a movie, whilst remaining limited to 30-bit color per frame (or usually, per scene)
- Tade0 3y ago> Some variants can do 12 bits per channel, but I believe this isn't often used. Dolby Vision has 12bit colour channels, but it's reportedly not such great a leap as going from 8bit to HDR. iPhones(12 onward) apparently support this standard, so anyone with such a device can see for themselves.
- rocqua 3y agoDolby vision can use 12 bit channels, and they are proud of it, but it also has a 10 bit channel mode, and that is used essentially everywhere.
- zokier 3y agoRec2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020
- adrian_b 3y agoMany good monitors are able to display 30-bit pixels in the Display P3 color space (frequently described as the DCI P3 color space, even if there are small differences between these two color spaces). I have been using only such monitors for more than a decade (e.g. I am still using a pair of relatively cheap Dell U2720Q; now there are newer, better models). However most monitors by default display only 24-bit sRGB colors. Many users never change the default settings, so they never see the full color range of those monitors. An annoying fact is that there are many programs, even expensive professional programs, which come with installers written in Java, and those installers crash whenever they see a 30-bit monitor, regardless of the operating system. As a workaround, it is usually enough to temporarily change the monitor colors to 24-bit during installation, as the actual programs do not care about the color resolution, so they work after installation. Color spaces larger than DCI P3 (e.g. that of Rec. 2020) can currently be displayed only by laser projectors.
- koala22 3y agoReally sad to see traditional LCDs tending toward obsolescence. The newer OLED and especially mini-LED technologies often give me migraine symptoms.
- bombela 3y agoWhat could be causing your headache? OLED (and mini-LED is very similar) are just better on almost all account (looking at you gradiant banding). Color, perfect black, brightness, high refresh rate.
- rxyz 3y agoPWM flicker probably
- imhoguy 3y agoHad migraines when CCFL backlights were replaced by cheap LEDs with PWM flickering in 50/60Hz visible frequencies. Pretty much same shit happened to early LED bulbs. Just wait for the better evolution.
- temikus 3y agoSame. There are now devices on the market that help find out sensitivity risk, I use this one when I’m going for hardware shopping: https://flickeralliance.org/collections/tools/products/opple-light-master-3 https://flickeralliance.org/collections/tools/products/opple...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rado 3y agoGood riddance. The LED backlight bleed has overstayed its welcome.
- ceeam 3y agoI fear that the days of no-flicker displays are numbered. Can't imagine that they invent something with per-pixel LEDs without PWM.
- crubier 3y agoWhen does the flicker bother anyone for my information?
- nyanpasu64 3y agoToday I learned that liquid crystals are being used to develop antennas?!
- anoncow 3y agoI read something similar about LG and OLED last year. Will look for a reference. Update: https://www.techradar.com/opinion/come-in-regular-oled-tvs-your-time-is-up https://www.techradar.com/opinion/come-in-regular-oled-tvs-y...
- cubefox 3y agoThis sounds unlikely, and it's just one source. I'm pretty sure LCDs still make the great majority of the TV, desktop and laptop monitor market. Even expensive iPads still use LCD. Only for phone screens OLED seems to be more common.
- rsynnott 3y agoOh, they’re going nowhere immediately. But if you’re a panel manufacturer, you’re probably winding up long term development; if the question is “how do we make better LCDs on a 5 year time horizon”, the answer is probably “that’s not worth investing in; in five years LCDs will be low-end only”.
- cubefox 3y agoIn the past OLED growth has been massively overestimated. E.g. Samsung entered with many years of delay relative to original projections, and even now only in the ultra premium QD-OLED category. So I wouldn't expect LCD becoming a niche product so fast.
- fcanesin 3y agoLots of comments regarding LED brightness for sun lit spaces. If you are suffering with that have a look into Samsung The Frame (2022 and later) series. They have a special coating that removes reflections, I have installed multiple of those in very bright places and the mate finish works marvelous well.
- rsynnott 3y agoThose are LCDs. The concern is about OLEDs (though realistically it’s one that is already largely solved at the high end, and that’ll percolate down)
- h2odragon 3y agoHistory rhymes again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
- rsynnott 3y agoEh? No; as a technology reaches its end of useful life, it’s natural that investment into it falls off to ~nothing. LCD screens will still be made for years (and for niche uses for decades) but the writing is on the wall. The Phoebus cartel deliberately made a then current and unlikely to be replaced anytime soon technology deliberately worse. I can’t see any commonality at all.
- ilyt 3y agoDo micro-leds have same burnout problems like OLED ones ?
- rcarr 3y agoI’m convinced consumer TVs/monitors are a dying product and we’ll all be using AR glasses by 2040 anyway. I hardly ever want to interact with a computer without using my xreal now.
- koromak 3y agoHow do you use the xreal? Looks interesting, never heard of it before. Is it mostly an entertainment thing or do you actually do work with it? Hows the pixel density? Does a virtual monitor look as good as a real 2k screen?
- rcarr 3y ago> Is it mostly an entertainment thing or do you actually do work with it? Both. I just got a steam deck and my current plan is to sell my MacBook and just use Steam Deck and some AR glasses as my set up for everything. I can use the desktop mode of Steam Deck along with Distrobox and Podman for dev work and then I can play games, watch Netflix etc using the game mode. The other alternative I was thinking of was getting a Samsung Galaxy and using Dex with some glasses and then using a linux cloud machine for maximum portability but I'm leaning more towards the Steam Deck at the minute because it's a lot of fun and being able to play/code locally regardless of internet signal is a major plus. > Hows the pixel density? Does a virtual monitor look as good as a real 2k screen? It's only 1080p so if you're used to a MacBook screen or a 4k monitor it's not going to be anywhere near as clear. That being said, the ergonomics are sooooo much better that, in my opinion, it is worth the screen clarity sacrifice. No matter what monitor set up I had going on, (chair, monitor height, position etc) I would always end up hunching. With the glasses you get none of that. You can fix the screen in the air if you use the Nebula app but I prefer to just have it move with me (which is the default) so you literally have zero shoulder/back pain throughout the day as the screen just moves with you. As for the lack of clarity, I just stick the zoom level to 110% and everything is fine. The Xreal does have a few other flaws: - brightness levels are pretty low, so daytime use can sometimes be a pain. you'll definitely want to use light mode during the day and then will probably switch to dark mode at night. - there's a faint halo ring on the periphery. doesn't interfere with the screen at all and I can ignore it but it's still annoying when you notice it. - You can get a painful pinching on the sides of your head when you wear it for a while. Oddly, you can completely eliminate this by wearing a thin polyester running headband underneath. Why this works I don't know, we're literally talking a very thin bit of material here and it completely stops it, it's very odd. - They don't have an accessory available that allows you to charge your device and use the glasses at the same time, you have to purchase either the Nubia Red Magic Gaming Dock or the Viture dock. Like I said, I am willing to put up with all of these issues because the hunching has got to the point where I think I'm getting the beginnings of kyphosis and I'm going to have to do some work in the gym correcting it. Personally, I think I'm going to be selling the XReal and purchasing a competitor, the Viture glasses, as they look to be a superior product. Reviews I've seen say they eliminate all the above pain points (far higher brightness, no halo, no pinching, accessory available for passthrough device charging - I've actually already bought this and it works a dream with the Xreal) as well as offering diopter adjustment and the really cool ability to just magnetically snap prescription lenses on to them rather than having to faff about like you do with the Xreal. I don't need these yet but could see it happening in the future as I get older so would be nice to have the easier option if need be. They just seem to have thought about the whole setup a bit better than Xreal have including a cool Android neckband accessory, magnetic power cable etc. There's also Rokid, but the styling puts me off. Links to all here so you can do your own comparison: https://www.viture.com https://www.viture.com https://xreal.com https://xreal.com https://global.rokid.com/ https://global.rokid.com/ It's a really exciting time at the minute, I don't think it'll be long until we get someone releasing 4k glasses in this space at which point they will be the clearly superior option to monitors.
- myrandomcomment 3y agoFor what it is worth, I just replaced a Samsung 65” from 2019 (QLED) with a new LG 77” OLED and was really blown away with the massive difference in the picture quality. The living room is full of windows, so the room is really sunny. Even at noon the pictures quality is great and easy to see. TV cost $2700 at Costco. The 2019 Samsung will get rotate into my office replacing a 2016 Samsung that crappy software for ARC was so buggy that it did not even work will with the Samsung sound-bar (having to unplug the TV once every 3-4 power on to allow it to work again).
- Night_Thastus 3y agoI hope OLED's major flaw gets fixed at some point - burn in. As long as burn in exists, brightness will have to be carefully controlled - which means OLEDs can never get as bright as a traditional LCD, and they're dangerous to use in cases where content is frequently static like desktops. For TVs, OLEDs are fantastic. But for now I feel they're too limited for desktops. Still, it's an exciting time for display technology. So many advancements made in the last 10 years.
- mrguyorama 3y agoOLEDs are great for computers if you're one of those tech review youtube channels who can afford to completely replace a $3000 monitor every few years because you often have to buy stuff to review it anyway.
- Night_Thastus 3y agoI agree. It's definitely gotten better with automatic brightness limiters, pixel shifting, pixel refreshes and all that. It's still not at a point I consider acceptable though. If I have to micro-manage or change my usage of the computer at all to accommodate the display, the technology isn't there yet imo.