Conclusion
Future monitors will have to include the two major improvements of better reaction time and richer and more accurate colors.
For "reaction time", we have reached a step. Going under 6ms doesn´t improve much the result. I challenge anyone to guess without looking at a monitor brand or model if it is a 2, 3 or 4 ms. In clone mode, even if one is in DVI and the other in VGA (if the signal management is good) there is strictly no visual afterglow difference. In fact, the persistent afterglow is no longer due to the monitor but our eyes that work like a digital camera with a too long shutter speed. Even if the monitor no longer has ghost images, the human eye continues to see traces of the 2/3 previous images. This is the origin of the blurred effect on the monitor. It will also happen with monitors under 1ms. To have better results, we will have to wait for a major technological breakthrough introduced at CeBIT: "120 Hz" monitors. In fact, there will still only be 60 images per second, but manufacturers will add an artificial black screening in the form of a black stripe moving up and down.
The first products unveiled at CeBIT, were amazingly good!
For now however, there is no release date for this new generation of monitors which has been delayed.
For
colors, the situation has much progressed since last year. Up until mid-2005, only some of the more prestigious actors (Eizo, Nec, LaCie...) seemed to be concerned by correct colors. Samsung, a panel manufacturer, changed its policy approximately at the same time as LG-Philips for some of its IPS panels. So, all of a sudden, colors became closer to what hey should have been. Then, in the beginning of the year, AU Optronics started to do the same. However, they seemed to be less in a rush. For now, only two monitors equipped with their panels have accurate colors from the start.
Now that this area has been addressed, the only thing left is to increase the amount of displayable colors and exceed the capacity of CRTs. The modification is currently ongoing as we saw in this article. The new CCFL backlighting with a wider gamut are a little disappointing for now, but the LEDs of the NEC monitor are very impressive. We can´t wait for this technology to be more widely available and go along with HD monitors, whose colors are
as we said before richer than SD movies.
