Liquid-crystal displays

Liquid-crystal displays (LCD), in the past restricted to notebooks, are now a reality for desktops. The three greatest advantages of this type of video monitor compared to traditional tube-based monitors (a.k.a. CRT, Cathode Ray Tube) are the use of less space on the desk (especially 17" models or bigger), less power consumption and 100% flicker-free, even with a refresh rate of only 60 frames per second (60 Hz). In this tutorial we will explain everything you need to know to make the right choice when buying a new LCD monitor.

The most important thing you need to know about LCD technology is that LCD panels have a fixed resolution. This resolution is called “native resolution”, “maximum resolution” or simply “resolution” and you must configure your desktop to that resolution, otherwise three things can happen, depending on the model of your monitor:

1. The image won’t be “sharp”; it will be blurred. You will see lots of squared areas, without any definition.

2. The monitor will centralize the image in the new resolution, reducing the image size and inserting a black frame around the image. For instance, if your LCD native resolution is 1280x960 and you decreased it to 800x600, this means there are 480 pixels left horizontally (1280 - 800) and 360 pixels left vertically (960 - 600). The image will be centralized and there will be 240 black pixels above and below the image and 180 blank pixels on the sides of the image.

3. The monitor will try to stretch the image in order to not show the black area around of the image, filling the whole screen. This is done thru a technique called interpolation, which isn’t 100% perfect and thus you will feel that the image has better quality (definition) when the screen is configured at its native resolution, even though the elements on the screen (e.g. icons, letters, etc) will be smaller. In general you will feel that the image is slightly out of focus (blurred) when the monitor is not configured in its native resolution.