LCD Syndrome (1 Viewer)

[WayneG]

Does anyone else have problems viewing LCD monitors? I tried one out and within a few minutes I experience headaches, strained eyes, even a touch of nausea. I've read reports that it's called LCD syndrome and is caused by the fluorescent lights used in the screens and by the fact that the pixels are so sharp and clear that some people's eyes see the pixels and not the letter or word. I found words very difficult to focus on and went buggy-eyed. Also, scrolling was very disconcerting as everything went blurry.

I also found the LCD screen didn't give great colour and it was hard to find a suitable viewing angle. It did however give better detail and exposure on photos - which could just be that my five-year-old CRT is dying.

I'm wondering if I would have this same problem with LCD TVS. Recently, I rode Mission: Space at Disney World, a simulator ride that uses LCD. I could really see the pixels and thought the nausea I felt may be from the motion but after experiencing with the same effects with my computer screen (while sitting motionless!) I'm rethinking that. It looks like it's CRT for me.

 

[Max Leung]

I prefer CRT for watching movies. Hence why my Sanyo PLV-Z1 projector is collecting dust (on the LCD panels inside too ).

I just hate the banding and jitter from LCD screens. (When I say jitter, I mean to say flickering that occurs when you have a set of parallel fine lines on the screen, and you perceive a flickering effect because the pixels are not refreshed in sync with each other).

For reading text I find LCD superior to anything else. And are great when judging the focus quality of pictures. Color reproduction? Forget it. Refresh rate? Forget it. Accurate grayscale and gamma? In most cases, forget it!

Colors do pop out, with the caveat that what you see on the screen will likely be very inaccurate unless you are lucky enough to have an LCD monitor that is extremely tweakable, and you have expensive calibration equipment.

 

[Ken Chan]

Is this with a digital (DVI) connection or not? With analog, if you use the exact native resolution, sometimes it doesn't quite sync, so the pixels in one part of the screen will be dead on sharp, but a little to one side or the other, they'll be off. That drives me nuts. I downrez so that everything is uniformly soft.

And LCDs are definitely not as good as CRT for first-person shooter-type games. (I guess the response times are improving, though.)

No problems with video, aside from the quality of color reproduction. Are you using the native sync rate? 60/70/75Hz, whatever the LCD says is optimal?

 

[WayneG]

I don't think it's DVI, just a regular connection like a CRT monitor - at least it fits in the back of the computer into my graphics board like the CRT did. I'm not sure about the sync rate. I just plugged it in and turned it on. How do I tell if it's set properly? Thanks.

 

[Ken Chan]

Yeah, that's not DVI, which is a whole different connector. Does your LCD even have a DVI input?

The ideal resolution should be mentioned somewhere in the manual, maybe also on the product website. Then, if you're using Windows XP for example, you'd right-click on your desktop (on an exposed area of wallpaper) and choose Properties. This opens Display Properties. The last tab is Settings. Go there, click the Advanced button on that page to open another dialog box. Click on the Adapter tab, and on that page, List All Modes.... Your current mode is highlighted. Somewhere on that list should be an exact match for size and Hertz. The color depth doesn't matter, but you might as well go with True Color (32 bit). Click OK several times. Other versions of Windows should work similarly, if not identically. The refresh rate is also listed by itself under the Monitor tab.

 

[Brian Ruth]

I wonder if this phenomena has anything to do with the rainbow effect on DLP projectors. Perhaps some people just have a higher sensitivity to flicker. :frowning:

 

[Todd Hochard]

LCD panels don't flicker. Each pixel is on, until it is told to change.

Wayne- I experienced a "weird" feeling, too, when I first got my LCD panel. Eyestrain, all that. It finally occurred to me what it was- TOO BRIGHT. Once I turned the contrast WAY down, and used some bias lighting (a little light above my work area), it has been fine.

Todd

 

[Max Leung]

Yeah, they don't flicker in the same way that a CRT flickers. However, there is a major flicker-like effect on some (most?) LCD monitors when you have a set of parallel lines seperated by one-pixel width. Something like this:

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Imagine the above as 6 parallel pixel-width lines, with a one pixel gap between them. If the lines are black, and the gap between is white or grey, on many laptop LCD displays you will actually see the lines "flicker", probably at about one-quarter the LCD refresh rate. Say, 12 frames per second.

It's an odd artifact. My Sanyo PLV-Z1 exhibits this with certain test patterns, and there is a service menu tweak to alleviate this a little (but not completely...stupid projector).

In general it's not a big issue for most video material, although computer animated features and live action where an actor is wearing a pinstrip or plaid shirt will bugger your eyes out.

 

[Scott L]

Whenever my 15" LCD starts to act up or flicker (usually from adjusting b/c levels) I press the Auto Calibrate button and the display gets stable again. This is button #2 on my Viewsonic, maybe your monitor has this feature too.

 

[WayneG]

Thanks for all your repsonses.

 

[Todd Hochard]

I like to call this pixel-straddling. The Panasonic LCD monitors we have at work (a few years old) are horrid for this.

For whatever reason, my Samsung- the analog-only 175V (and the new Samsungs we have at work), is utterly free of this annoyance. I cannot say why, but regardless of what resolution I drive it at, this doesn't happen.