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.
In digital imaging, a pixel, pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the smallest element that can be manipulated through software.
A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned array, used to represent characters, symbols and images. Most types of modern technology use dot matrices for display of information, including mobile phones, televisions, and printers. The system is also used in textiles with sewing, knitting and weaving.
A screensaver is a computer program that blanks the display screen or fills it with moving images or patterns when the computer has been idle for a designated time. The original purpose of screensavers was to prevent phosphor burn-in on CRT or plasma computer monitors. Though most modern monitors are not susceptible to this issue, screensaver programs are still used for other purposes. Screensavers are often set up to offer a basic layer of security by requiring a password to re-access the device. Some screensaver programs also use otherwise-idle computer resources to do useful work, such as processing for volunteer computing projects.
A graphics card is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a display device such as a monitor. Graphics cards are sometimes called discrete or dedicated graphics cards to emphasize their distinction to an integrated graphics processor on the motherboard or the central processing unit (CPU). A graphics processing unit (GPU) that performs the necessary computations is the main component in a graphics card, but the acronym "GPU" is sometimes also used to erroneously refer to the graphics card as a whole.
A framebuffer is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Modern video cards contain framebuffer circuitry in their cores. This circuitry converts an in-memory bitmap into a video signal that can be displayed on a computer monitor.
Apple Inc. has sold a variety of LCD and CRT computer displays since introducing their first display in 1980. Apple paused production of their own standalone displays in 2016 and partnered with LG to design displays for Macs. In June 2019, the Pro Display XDR was introduced, however it was expensive and targeted for professionals. In March 2022, the Studio Display was launched as a consumer-targeted counterpart. These are currently the only Apple-branded displays available.
A film recorder is a graphical output device for transferring images to photographic film from a digital source. In a typical film recorder, an image is passed from a host computer to a mechanism to expose film through a variety of methods, historically by direct photography of a high-resolution cathode ray tube (CRT) display. The exposed film can then be developed using conventional developing techniques, and displayed with a slide or motion picture projector. The use of film recorders predates the current use of digital projectors, which eliminate the time and cost involved in the intermediate step of transferring computer images to film stock, instead directly displaying the image signal from a computer. Motion picture film scanners are the opposite of film recorders, copying content from film stock to a computer system. Film recorders can be thought of as modern versions of Kinescopes.
The refresh rate, also known as vertical refresh rate or vertical scan rate in reference to terminology originating with the cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), is the number of times per second that a raster-based display device displays a new image. This is independent from frame rate, which describes how many images are stored or generated every second by the device driving the display. On CRT displays, higher refresh rates produce less flickering, thereby reducing eye strain. In other technologies such as liquid-crystal displays, the refresh rate affects only how often the image can potentially be updated.
The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor, or other display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by different factors in cathode ray tube (CRT) displays, flat-panel displays and projection displays using fixed picture-element (pixel) arrays.
Text mode is a computer display mode in which content is internally represented on a computer screen in terms of characters rather than individual pixels. Typically, the screen consists of a uniform rectangular grid of character cells, each of which contains one of the characters of a character set; at the same time, contrasted to graphics mode or other kinds of computer graphics modes.
Pixels per inch (ppi) and pixels per centimetre are measurements of the pixel density of an electronic image device, such as a computer monitor or television display, or image digitizing device such as a camera or image scanner. Horizontal and vertical density are usually the same, as most devices have square pixels, but differ on devices that have non-square pixels. Pixel density is not the same as resolution — where the former describes the amount of detail on a physical surface or device, the latter describes the amount of pixel information regardless of its scale. Considered in another way, a pixel has no inherent size or unit, but when it is printed, displayed, or scanned, then the pixel has both a physical size (dimension) and a pixel density (ppi).
A composite monitor or composite video monitor is any analog video display that receives input in the form of an analog composite video signal to a defined specification. A composite video signal encodes all information on a single conductor; a composite cable has a single live conductor plus earth. Other equipment with display functionality includes monitors with more advanced interfaces and connectors giving a better picture, including analog VGA, and digital DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort; and television (TV) receivers which are self-contained, receiving and displaying video RF broadcasts received with an internal tuner. Video monitors are used for displaying computer output, closed-circuit television and other applications requiring a two-dimensional monochrome or colour image.
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 display such as a cathode ray tube (CRT) in an old computer monitor or television set. It is caused by cumulative non-uniform use of the screen.
A video wall is a special multi-monitor setup that consists of multiple computer monitors, video projectors, or television sets tiled together contiguously or overlapped in order to form one large screen. Typical display technologies include LCD panels, Direct View LED arrays, blended projection screens, Laser Phosphor Displays, and rear projection cubes. Jumbotron technology was also previously used. Diamond Vision was historically similar to Jumbotron in that they both used cathode-ray tube (CRT) technology, but with slight differences between the two. Early Diamond vision displays used separate flood gun CRTs, one per subpixel. Later Diamond vision displays and all Jumbotrons used field-replaceable modules containing several flood gun CRTs each, one per subpixel, that had common connections shared across all CRTs in a module; the module was connected through a single weather-sealed connector.
A multiple-sync (multisync) monitor, also known as a multiscan or multimode monitor, is a raster-scan analog video monitor that can properly synchronise with multiple horizontal and vertical scan rates. In contrast, fixed frequency monitors can only synchronise with a specific set of scan rates. They are generally used for computer displays, but sometimes for television, and the terminology is mostly applied to CRT displays although the concept applies to other technologies.
A monochrome monitor is a type of computer monitor in which computer text and images are displayed in varying tones of only one color, as opposed to a color monitor that can display text and images in multiple colors. They were very common in the early days of computing, from the 1960s through the 1980s, before color monitors became widely commercially available. They are still widely used in applications such as computerized cash register systems, owing to the age of many registers. Green screen was the common name for a monochrome monitor using a green "P1" phosphor screen; the term is often misused to refer to any block mode display terminal, regardless of color, e.g., IBM 3279, 3290.
Display lag is a phenomenon associated with most types of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) like smartphones and computers and nearly all types of high-definition televisions (HDTVs). It refers to latency, or lag between when the signal is sent to the display and when the display starts to show that signal. This lag time has been measured as high as 68 ms, or the equivalent of 3-4 frames on a 60 Hz display. Display lag is not to be confused with pixel response time, which is the amount of time it takes for a pixel to change from one brightness value to another. Currently the majority of manufacturers quote the pixel response time, but neglect to report display lag.
