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Electronic visual display

Display device for presentation of images, video, or text transmitted electronically

Summary

Display device for presentation of images, video, or text transmitted electronically

An electronic visual display is a display device that can display images, video, or text that is transmitted electronically. Electronic visual displays include television sets, computer monitors, and digital signage. They are ubiquitous in mobile computing applications like tablet computers, smartphones, and information appliances. Many electronic visual displays are informally referred to as screens, and those that also contain some means of touch input are called touchscreens.

Starting in the early 2000s, flat-panel displays began to dominate the industry, as cathode-ray tubes (CRT) were phased out, especially for computer applications. Starting in the mid 2010s, curved display panels began to be used in televisions, computer monitors, and smartphones.

Types

There are various technologies used for electronic visual displays:

Liquid crystal display (LCD) including LED-backlit LCD
LED display
- OLED display
- AMOLED display
Plasma display
Quantum dot display
Electroluminescent display

An overhead projector can be considered a type of electronic visual display.

Additionally, CRTs were widely used in the past and microLED displays are under development.

Classification

Electronic visual displays present visual information according to the electrical input signal (analog or digital) either by emitting light (then they are called active displays) or, alternatively, by modulating available light during the process of reflection or transmission (light modulators are called passive displays).

Active displays	Passive displays
	present visual information by emitting light
Principle	Liquid crystal display (LCD) + backlight
(this combination is considered an active display)
Example	LCD TV screen, LCD computer monitor
Principle	Cathodoluminescence
Example	Cathode ray tube (CRT)
Field emission display (FED)
Vacuum fluorescent display (VFD)
Surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED)
Principle	Electroluminescence
Example	(thin or thick film) electro-luminescence (EL)
(inorganic or organic) light emitting diode (LED, OLED)
gas discharge display (Nixie tube)
Principle	Photoluminescence
Example	Plasma display panel (PDP)
Principle	Incandescence

Example	Numitron, a 7-segment numerical display tube

Display mode of observation

Electronic visual displays can be observed directly (direct view display) or the displayed information can be projected to a screen (transmissive or reflective screen). This usually happens with smaller displays at a certain magnification.

Display modes of observation
Direct view display
transmissive mode of operation
reflective mode of operation
transflective mode of operation
(e.g. transflective LCD)

A different kind of projection display is the class of "laser projection displays", where the image is built up sequentially either via line by line scanning or by writing one complete column at a time. For that purpose one beam is formed from three lasers operating at the primary colors, and this beam is scanned electro-mechanically (galvanometer scanner, micro-mirror array)) or electro-acousto-optically.

Layout of picture elements

Depending on the shape and on the arrangement of the picture elements of a display, either fixed information can be displayed (symbols, signs), simple numerals (7-segment layout) or arbitrary shapes can be formed (dot-matrix displays).

Layout of picture elements
Segmented displays
characters, numbers and symbols of fixed shape (may be multiplex addressed)
The following layouts are well known:
Seven-segment display
Fourteen-segment display
Sixteen-segment display

Emission and control of colors

Colors can be generated by selective emission, by selective absorption, transmission or by selective reflection.

Color emission and control
additive mixing
primary colors add up to produce white light
temporal mixing (additive)
e.g. rotating primary color filter wheel in projectors
spatio temporal color mixing
combined spatial and temporal mixing

arrangement of sub-pixels
for additive color mixing
see sub-pixel arrangements 1
see sub-pixel arrangements 2
see sub-pixel arrangements 3
Examples:
stripe
delta-nabla
PenTile arrangement, e.g. RGB+White

Addressing modes

Each sub-pixel of a display device must be selected (addressed) in order to be energized in a controlled way.

Addressing modes (selection of picture elements)
direct addressing
each individual picture element has electrical connections to the driving electronics.


active matrix addressing
active electronic elements added in order to improve selection of picture elements.
The matrix of active electronic elements can be used in transmissive mode of operation (high transmittance required) or a non-transparent active matrix can be used for reflective LCDs (e.g. liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS)).

Display driving modes

Driving modes (activation of picture elements)
voltage driving
activation of pixels by voltage (e.g. LCD field effects). If the current is low enough this mode may be the basis for displays with very low power requirements (e.g. μW for LCDs without backlight).

References

SID - Society for Information Display International Conference Proceedings 1970–2008
Journal of the Society for Information Display (JSID)
Display Reparatur (in German)
Passive Displays
Choosing an IT device

References

Louis D. Silverstein, et al., Hybrid spatial-temporal color synthesis and its applications, JSID 14/1(2006), pp. 3–13

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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