120HZ Monitor, will it help with eye strain?

[Gabriel64]

Will a true 120hz monitor,like the Samsung unit for 3D help with eye strain? Thanks for your help.

 

[keith_T]

I am wondering if the article at http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/monitors/display/lcd-guide_11.html maybe explains some of the problem : FRC (Frame Rate Control) done to interpolate from native 6 bit colour depth leading to flickering at 60Hz - but only some of the time, on some images.
I think I am going to invest in one of these IPS screens too, to see what happens

 

[MPdesign]

Keith,
I plan on doing the same, please reply with your verdict after you get one.

 

[Someone_08]

Keith,
I plan on doing the same, please reply with your verdict after you get one.

+1

If anyone who is bothered by most normal LCD screens has solved it with the new 120Hz models (such as the Samsung Syncmaster 2233RZ) please do tell. I also want to know if I should buy one.

Thanks.

 

[Guest]

I also am bothered by LCD panels. I can't watch any LCD for any length of time before my eyes freak out and I feel nausea and become light sensitive. I tried dimming the panel to no backlite. Still had problems. I bought and returned a Samsung XL2370 LED monitor as it caused the same issues. My eyes have been checked and are fine.

The last thing I didn't consider was the refresh rate of 60 hz. So since I use a CRT at 85hz, I bumped it down to 60 hz. Sure enough my eyes started hurting and I felt nausea. So I think that the 60 hz is the issue that is causing us the pain.

I am now looking for a 120hz monitor to try in Canada. Any suggestions.

 

[daiv8128]

I understand the differences between monitors and I realize that on paper it may seem that there should be no eye strain with an LCD monitor but for some people, like me, there is. This is no doubt not an issue for you. I wish it weren't for me either. I will continue to look for a solution. Ironically a CRT monitor is easier on my eyes. Keith, you are not the only one whose eyes are bothered by LCD monitors. Unless my eyes can recover, I will have to start wearing glasses. I am convinced the problem is due to a low refress rate because I first noticed the monitor was hurting my vision by the way my vision was disturbed when I would go into a department store lit by overhead fluorescent lighting. I figured that my eyes had becomes sensitized to the 60 cycles per second flicker of the fluorescent back-light of my lcd monitor, so when my eyes were subjected to more of the same on a large scale in the form of the overhead fluorescent lighting of a store, it bothered them. In researching the problem I found that Microsoft recommended a higher refresh rate to avoid or lessen eye strain. As I recall, their advice was at least 85 cycles per second. I bought a more expensive monitor that enabled me to increase the refresh rate to 85, and that helped, but not enough. So I plan to buy one with a native refresh rate of 100 or 120. The other factor contributing to the problem is, I suspect, based on what others have told me about their vision problems, that the monitor is too close. In the old days when one sat watching t.v., the t.v. was usually on the other side of the room--probably at least 8 feet away, maybe 12 feet or more. In theory it isn't supposed to strain our eyes, but in reality many people find that it does. I think the reason some people find that it strains their eyes and some don't is due to a combination of how good a pair of eyes they were born with together with how old they are and their general health and how much daily abuse they are currently subjecting them to. Watching t.v. for an hour or two after diner is one thing, but spending all day in close up work, reading and writing, whether on paper or on screen is, I think, not something our eyes were designed for, but it is what I do. Maybe when I was younger my eyes could have taken the abuse, but I guess I've been hard on them for decades and they are telling me that enough is enough. So I plan to buy a big 100 0r 120Hz monitor and put it on the wall 8 feet away, and see if that helps. Dave J

 

[keith_T]

Further update, and hopefully some relief to others suffering from migraines with TFT/LCD monitors.

The answer seems to be "IPS" (check Wikipedia) rather than the normal (cheaper) TFTs.
Either current generation IMAC, or for a PC something like the Viewsonic VP2365 (plus many other more expensive variants).

For laptops, they are available as an option on HP Elitebook 8740W - the DreamColour display.

As to why and how, there seem to be 2 theories:
1 - they have 8 bit or 10 bit colur resolutions, while normal TFTs only have 6 bit native colour resolution and hence dither the colours to simulate the windows 8 bit space - and it's this dither that causes flicker.
2 - they are just an optically higher quality display - I used to find aperture grill CRTs were OK while shadow mask CRTs also could cause problems.

So - if you know anyone unable to use a regular TFT display this might just be an answer for them.
Bad news - you will probably have to buy one to find out :-(

 

[nilism]

+1 60Hz for LCD is fine becasue it is always lit, only changes pixel color when refresh, it does not turn it off. On crt's there is one beam that scans the screen and lits pixels one by one, by the time it returns to the same pixel it has faded to dark.

This conversation seems to have missed the central point behind why you would want a 120Hz LCD. The quote above is exactly why we do need higher, true, refresh rates on LCD monitors (as opposed to frame insertion etc.)

The human eye/brain (I will not differentiate what happens where) does not function on draw-and-hold technology of LCD's. This is why there are a group of people out there who claim their experience is 'better' on CRT's, which are instantaneous flashes of images that are not held. If you looked at a 60Hz CRT with a 120 fps camera you would see 60 images and 60 black screens (this is an oversimplification because CRT's are line-by-line, but on average true). Essentially the brain fills in the rest between this instantaneousness flashes, much much more successfully then black frame insertion or interpolated frame insertion has managed.

In fact, the mere existence of these two emerging technologies in the TV world is an acknowledgement to this. Although some might argue it has to do more with the lower frame rate of PAL/NTSC, this is merely the same reason with a lower set of parameters.

LCD's shutter horribly when scrolling text, or in video games, or watching movies because of the draw-and-hold technology they implement. Without hashing through the gory details, your brain gets a little messed up interpreting the motion of an image that is produced through this method. Basically your eye sees an infinite number of 'fps' but you are looking at 60 still images a second held for 16 ms each. This is opposed to say 60 'instantaneous' flashes that a CRT might generate, which mimics how our eyes actually look around and how our brains perceive motion.

Originally LCD's were crap because of ghosting, which was a refresh rate thing. Now we are down to the several ms grey-to-grey flip rate for pixels on your screen, so this is not a problem anymore. A 5 ms event will happen 200 times a second, or 200Hz, if you will. What this does allow us to do is allow us to effectively increase the refresh rate of the draw-hold technology we are dealing with until a point where it no longer appears to be draw-hold to our brains and things can operate smoothly.

This is why we need refresh rates that don't suck! There is lots written about this... feel free to look it up.

If you don't believe me just grab your scroll bar and start scrolling while trying to read this. It shutters to the point you can't read it comfortably. Also, the wheel mouse/down arrow keys don't count cause they aren't continuously scrolling.

Edited for grammar.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey