Why Backlighting Matters
When you're looking at an LCD monitor, it's important to remember that the light doesn't come from the panel but from a separate light source. Different sources give the screen a different quality:
What is Backlighting?
One of the difficulties with liquid crystal displays (LCD) is that the crystals themselves don't emit light. This means that if you were to just use a panel on its own, you wouldn't really be able to see anything. The way that manufacturers such as Sony get around this is to use lights in the assembly that illuminate the screen from behind. There are two main technologies in use for monitors:
- CCFL: Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps use fluorescent tubes mounted behind the screen. Formerly common on entry-level HDTVs, they run relatively hot and consume a significant amount of power. They can also be quite bulky.
- LED: Light-Emitting-Diodes install in strips, usually behind and along the edges of the screen. They are smaller, brighter, and cooler than CCFLs and are commonly found on higher quality computer monitors and HDTVs.
What Do You Need to Know About LCDs?
On a technical level they are fully digital displays built around a liquid crystal array. They take the signal from your video card and convert it into a series of images that produce the illusion of motion. While there are a number of fascinating features to the technology, they are less important to the end user than more pragmatic ones such as which inputs it supports. Some features to look for are:
- Interface: As fully digital devices, most monitors do not support VGA or other analog interfaces; they take the digital signal from your graphics card and draw a picture directly. Note that both DVI and HDMI use the same protocol, so you can use a DVI-to HDMI cable to connect a DVI video card to the monitor's HDMI input. The only significant difference is that an HDMI cable can carry both sound as well as video.
- Resolution: Because each display is made up from a series of discrete individual elements it has a native resolution where everything looks its sharpest. Whenever possible you want to use that resolution.
- Illumination: LED elements both last longer and provide a higher quality of illumination.
Choosing the Right Computer Monitor
When choosing a Sony Monitor, the number of options can be overwhelming. Some things that you want to consider are the size, resolution, and compatibility. While you can get adapters, it's always easier to connect an HDMI monitor to an HDMI output, than messing around with connecting it to DisplayPort. You also want to balance size and resolution so that it's big enough that you can see everything but not so big that it's unclear.
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