This is a comparison of various properties of different display technologies.
Display technology | Screen shape | Largest known diagonal | Typical use | Usable in bright room | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
(in) | (cm) | ||||
Eidophor front projection | Flat | (limited only by brightness) | TV | No | |
Shadow mask CRT | Spherical curve or flat | 42 [1] | 107 | TV, computer monitor | Yes |
Aperture grille CRT | Cylindrical curve or flat | 42 [2] | 107 | TV, computer monitor | Yes |
Monochrome CRT | Spherical curve or flat | 30 [3] | 76 | TV, computer monitor, radar display, oscilloscope | Yes |
Direct view Charactron CRT | Spherical curve | 24 | 61 | Computer monitor, radar display | No |
CRT self-contained rear-projection | Flat lenticular | 80 [4] | 203 | TV | Yes |
CRT front projection | Flat | (limited only by brightness) | TV or presentation | No | |
Plasma display panel (PDP) | Flat | 152 [5] | 386 | TV, computer monitor (In some early "portable" computers. They required too much power for battery-powered laptops) [6] [7] [8] [9] | Partial |
Direct view LCD | Flat | 110 [10] | 274 | TV, computer monitor | Yes |
LCD self-contained rear-projection | Flat lenticular | 70 [11] | 178 | TV | Yes |
LCD front-projection | Flat | (limited only by brightness) | TV or presentation | Yes | |
DLP self-contained rear-projection | Flat lenticular | 120 [12] | 305 | TV | Yes |
DLP front-projection | Flat | (limited only by brightness) | TV or presentation | Yes | |
LCoS self-contained rear-projection | Flat | 110 [13] | 279 | TV | Yes |
LCoS front-projection | Flat | (limited only by brightness) | TV or presentation | Yes | |
Laser self-contained rear projection | Flat lenticular | 75 [14] | 191 | TV | Yes |
LED | Flat | 279.92 [15] | 711 | Billboards, TV | Yes |
SED | Flat | 55 [16] | 140 | Computer monitor, TV | Yes |
FED | Flat | ? | ? | Computer monitor, TV | Yes |
EPD (e-paper) | Flat (flexible) | ? | ? | Electronic paper | Yes |
OLED | Any, but most commonly flat rectangular with or without rounded edges, notch(es) and holes, circular, or curved (flexible) [17] | 88 [18] | 223.52 | Computer monitor, TV, Mobile phone | Yes |
'LED' LCD | Flat rectangular, circular, semi circle | 98 | 249 | TV, computer monitor | Yes |
'QLED' LCD | Curved or flat | 98 | 249 | TV, computer monitor | Yes |
Telescopic pixel display | |||||
Ferroelectric LCD | |||||
'mLED' LED | Curved or flat | ?? | ?? | Mobile phones, wearable electronics, VR displays, smartwatches, optical instruments, AR displays | Yes |
QDLED [19] [20] [21] [22] | — | — | — | — | Yes |
IMOD | Flat | 1.2 [23] | 3 | Mobile phone [24] | Yes |
Laser Phosphor Display (LPD) | Flat / Box | 196 | 497.8 | Presentation | Yes |
Virtual retinal display | Any shape | — | — | Experimental, possibly virtual reality | Depends on system |
Major technologies are CRT, LCD and its derivatives (Quantum dot display, LED backlit LCD, WLCD, OLCD), Plasma, and OLED and its derivatives (Transparent OLED, PMOLED, AMOLED). An emerging technology is Micro LED. Cancelled and now obsolete technologies are SED and FED.
Different display technologies have vastly different temporal characteristics, leading to perceptual differences of motion, flicker, etc.
The figure shows a sketch of how different technologies present a single white/grey frame. Time and intensity is not to scale. Notice that some have a fixed intensity, while the illuminated period is variable. This is a kind of pulse-width modulation. Others can vary the actual intensity in response to the input signal.
Researchers announced a display that uses silicon metasurface pixels that do not require polarized light and require half the energy. It employs a transparent conductive oxide as a heater that can quickly change the pixels. The pixels are 100 times thinner than liquid crystal. Response times are under 1 millisecond. They claim that the metasurface array could replace the liquid crystal layer in today's displays, eliminating the need for production technology. [25]
A computer monitor is an output device that displays information in pictorial or textual form. A discrete monitor comprises a visual display, support electronics, power supply, housing, electrical connectors, and external user controls.
A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but instead use a backlight or reflector to produce images in color or monochrome.
A plasma display panel is a type of flat-panel display that uses small cells containing plasma: ionized gas that responds to electric fields. Plasma televisions were the first large flat-panel displays to be released to the public.
A flat-panel display (FPD) is an electronic display used to display visual content such as text or images. It is present in consumer, medical, transportation, and industrial equipment.
An LCD projector is a type of video projector for displaying video, images or computer data on a screen or other flat surface. It is a modern equivalent of the slide projector or overhead projector. To display images, LCD projectors typically send light from a metal-halide lamp through a prism or series of dichroic filters that separates light to three polysilicon panels – one each for the red, green and blue components of the video signal. As polarized light passes through the panels, individual pixels can be opened to allow light to pass or closed to block the light. The combination of open and closed pixels can produce a wide range of colors and shades in the projected image.
A display device is an output device for presentation of information in visual or tactile form. When the input information that is supplied has an electrical signal the display is called an electronic display.
Digital light processing (DLP) is a set of chipsets based on optical micro-electro-mechanical technology that uses a digital micromirror device. It was originally developed in 1987 by Larry Hornbeck of Texas Instruments. While the DLP imaging device was invented by Texas Instruments, the first DLP-based projector was introduced by Digital Projection Ltd in 1997. Digital Projection and Texas Instruments were both awarded Emmy Awards in 1998 for the DLP projector technology. DLP is used in a variety of display applications from traditional static displays to interactive displays and also non-traditional embedded applications including medical, security, and industrial uses.
Flicker is a visible change in brightness between cycles displayed on video displays. It applies to the refresh interval on cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions and computer monitors, as well as plasma computer displays and televisions.
A television set or television receiver is an electronic device for viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or as a computer monitor. It combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers. Introduced in the late 1920s in mechanical form, television sets became a popular consumer product after World War II in electronic form, using cathode-ray tube (CRT) technology. The addition of color to broadcast television after 1953 further increased the popularity of television sets in the 1960s, and an outdoor antenna became a common feature of suburban homes. The ubiquitous television set became the display device for the first recorded media for consumer use in the 1970s, such as Betamax, VHS; these were later succeeded by DVD. It has been used as a display device since the first generation of home computers and dedicated video game consoles in the 1980s. By the early 2010s, flat-panel television incorporating liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology, especially LED-backlit LCD technology, largely replaced CRT and other display technologies. Modern flat-panel TVs are typically capable of high-definition display and can also play content from a USB device. In the late 2010s, most flat-panel TVs began offering 4K and 8K resolutions.
A liquid-crystal-display television is a television set that uses a liquid-crystal display to produce images. It is by far the most widely produced and sold type of television display. LCD TVs are thin and light, but have some disadvantages compared to other display types such as high power consumption, poorer contrast ratio, and inferior color gamut.
An active shutter 3D system is a technique of displaying stereoscopic 3D images. It works by only presenting the image intended for the left eye while blocking the right eye's view, then presenting the right-eye image while blocking the left eye, and repeating this so rapidly that the interruptions do not interfere with the perceived fusion of the two images into a single 3D image.
Screen burn-in, image burn-in, ghost image, or shadow image, is a permanent discoloration of areas on an electronic visual display such as a cathode-ray tube (CRT) in an older computer monitor or television set. It is caused by cumulative non-uniform use of the screen.
Laser color television, or laser color video display, is a type of television that utilizes two or more individually modulated optical (laser) rays of different colors to produce a combined spot that is scanned and projected across the image plane by a polygon-mirror system or less effectively by optoelectronic means to produce a color-television display. The systems work either by scanning the entire picture a dot at a time and modulating the laser directly at high frequency, much like the electron beams in a cathode ray tube, or by optically spreading and then modulating the laser and scanning a line at a time, the line itself being modulated in much the same way as with digital light processing (DLP).
Large-screen television technology developed rapidly in the late 1990s and 2000s. Prior to the development of thin-screen technologies, rear-projection television was standard for larger displays, and jumbotron, a non-projection video display technology, was used at stadiums and concerts. Various thin-screen technologies are being developed, but only liquid crystal display (LCD), plasma display (PDP) and Digital Light Processing (DLP) have been publicly released. Recent technologies like organic light-emitting diode (OLED) as well as not-yet-released technologies like surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) or field-emission display (FED) are in development to supersede earlier flat-screen technologies in picture quality.
An LED-backlit LCD is a liquid-crystal display that uses LEDs for backlighting instead of traditional cold cathode fluorescent (CCFL) backlighting. LED-backlit displays use the same TFT LCD technologies as CCFL-backlit LCDs, but offer a variety of advantages over them.
Electrically operated display devices have developed from electromechanical systems for display of text, up to all-electronic devices capable of full-motion 3D color graphic displays. Electromagnetic devices, using a solenoid coil to control a visible flag or flap, were the earliest type, and were used for text displays such as stock market prices and arrival/departure display times. The cathode ray tube was the workhorse of text and video display technology for several decades until being displaced by plasma, liquid crystal (LCD), and solid-state devices such as thin-film transistors (TFTs), LEDs and OLEDs. With the advent of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), integrated circuit (IC) chips, microprocessors, and microelectronic devices, many more individual picture elements ("pixels") could be incorporated into one display device, allowing graphic displays and video.
A display resolution standard is a commonly used width and height dimension of an electronic visual display device, measured in pixels. This information is used for electronic devices such as a computer monitor. Certain combinations of width and height are standardized and typically given a name and an initialism which is descriptive of its dimensions.
The following table compares cathode-ray tube (CRT), liquid-crystal display (LCD), plasma and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display device technologies. These are the most often used technologies for television and computer displays. A less detailed comparison of a wider variety of display technologies is available at Comparison of display technology.
Universal Display Corporation is a developer and manufacturer of organic light emitting diodes (OLED) technologies and materials as well as provider of services to the display and lighting industries. It is also an OLED research company. Founded in 1994, the company currently owns or has exclusive, co-exclusive or sole license rights with respect to more than 3,000 issued and pending patents worldwide for the commercialization of phosphorescent based OLEDs and also flexible, transparent and stacked OLEDs - for both display and lighting applications. Its phosphorescent OLED technologies and materials are licensed and supplied to companies such as Samsung, LG, AU Optronics CMEL, Pioneer, Panasonic Idemitsu OLED lighting and Konica Minolta.