100Hz LCDs?

[Fat Tone]

Just wondering if anyone (Rylan?) knows if it is ever likely to be an option to drive an LCD at 100Hz?

Some of my work involves displaying images for precise amounts of time. The display duration can only ever be a multiple of the screen refresh speed (e.g. 16.66ms for a typical 60Hz LCD) plus some small adjustment for pixel responses if we really care.

If I need to do subliminal stuff, say 10ms, then I have to use a CRT, but these are getting rarer and more inconvenient (my testing cubicles are all fitted out with LCDs) to use.

I presume refresh rates are limited by the bandwidth of the DVI interface. Is it likely that a dual-link system could be used to provide the bandwidth required? I don't need large resolution - 1024* or even 800* will do.

Cheers,

T.

[Paddy]

Because you are a mate how about I take those nasty LCDs from you. In return I can give you my trusty Compaq 151FS...

[Dr Mordrid]

AMOLED's can refresh ~1000 times faster at contrast ratios of 1,000,000:1 with true blacks (Sony's). Can't wait

[Fat Tone]

Because you are a mate how about I take those nasty LCDs from you. In return I can give you my trusty Compaq 151FS...

You are SUCH a mate. What would I do without you?

[Fat Tone]

AMOLED's can refresh ~1000 times faster at contrast ratios of 1,000,000:1 with true blacks (Sony's). Can't wait

Lets hope they produce an interface that can keep up.

[Admiral]

Samsung LE4073BD

Only problem, I don't think it's on the market yet.

[Taz]

It's also 40"'s

[rylan]

Currently, no you can't drive a lcd monitor at 100Hz. The vast majority of the driving electronics are designed for 60Hz update, so to change that you're talking about designing a piece of glass from the ground up (as Samsung did with their 100Hz panel).

The black frame interleaving actually works pretty well... I've seen it being tested by the research group at company headquarters. The method that Samsung uses also sounds interesting, since its basically an interlopation method that adds extra frames of data between two real frames, and it doesn't require higher bandwidth over the dvi cable.

Unfortunatley, for your purposes there isn't anything that'll help you at the moment. The response time of the crystals is too slow to turn on and off to produce the desired effect, unless you are able to dynamically pulse the backlight. In that case you could alter the CCFL frequency and pulse the bulbs to get a much lower effective image time.
Being able to use a higher refresh rate over the DVI cable won't help, since the scalar chips all run at 60Hz anyway. You wouldn't need duallink anyway, since if you could run 1024x768@120Hz thats only 100MHz dvi clock, and the link works up to 165MHz.

[Fat Tone]

Many thanks.

Is it likely things will ever move to true 100Hz displays? As crystal response times improve and make it feasible, could it happen or is there no perceived need in the mass market?

[rylan]

Pretty unlikely due to the cost involved with redesigning the ICs for the column driver arrays, and also for the scalar chips from Pixelworks and Genesis. LCD manufacturers are still in a price war and have to keep costs down, and 60Hz is more than good enough for the wide majority of the market they sell into. There will be things like the higher refresh glass such as the one from Samsung or other ways to effectively improve response and percieved viewing like black frame insertion, but the DVI/HDMI link will stay 60Hz.

In 5 years when OLEDs are catching on for larger displays (bigger than cell phones etc) is when you'll probably see high refresh.

[Jon P. Inghram]

One of the LCDs I tried a while back (either an LG or a Samsung, I forget which) could refresh at 75 Hz if you turned RTC off. I'll just stick with a CRT until OLED, SED, or some other display technology tosses LCDs in the trash.