Understand the components, a two piece puzzle
The manufacturers just need to associate two components to build their screens, a bezel and the most important thing a panel.
The panel is a 0.4” to 0.8” wide rectangle with on one side the screening surface and on the other side an electronic card. Between the panel and the bezel, two to twelve neon tubes in charge of the backlighting, liquid crystals through which the light travel and colour filters.
The process is as follows: neon tubes emits white light. This light try to goes through the liquid crystals. The liquid crystal cells, three by pixel, are controlled by a transistor, which is controlled by the motherboard located at the back of the panel. To each electrical tension emit by the transistor correspond a crystal position.
If they are vertically placed, the neon tube light is stuck, and the result is a black dot on the screen.
If the liquid crystals are horizontal, light goes through and creates a white dot.
Each pixel is made of three liquid crystal cells next to each others. In front of each cell is placed a red, blue or green filter. When all crystals are horizontally placed, the light goes through. The first cell emit a red light, the second one a green light and the last one a blue light. The eye gather all three lights and see one: white. This is the additive lightening process. Then, in order to recreate all available colours, it is necessary to apply various electrical tensions on the transistors. If the transistors command 256 red, 256 blue and 256 green, the maximum amount of available colours will be: 256 x 256 x 256 = 16.7 million of colours.
At the end of the day, the manufacturer options are rather limited. They need to select the right panel, maybe customize electronic components, choose the default settings and integrates all elements in a bezel.
The panel choice is obviously essential. From this choice depends, the number of colours on screen, the vision angles, the maximal amount of light available and the pixel reactivity. The manufacturer have to target the fastest liquid crystals. If liquid crystals are too slow, the picture shown won’t be the picture transmit by the graphic card and expected by the spectator. To make their choice, manufacturers can choose between three different panel technologies and dozens of available model.
