1. Supporting I/O Devices
Monitors & Video Cards
Supporting I/O Devices

2. PC Displays Primary output device of a computer is the monitor
Monitor, Video Display, VDT, Screen…..
Two necessary components for video output
Video controller
Monitor

3. PC Displays CRT- Cathode Ray Tube
A CRT monitor uses a vacuum tube to contain the beam of electrons used to produce the image
Two Types:
Regular
Flat-technology monitors

4. PC Displays Flat Panel Technology LCD : Liquid Crystal Display
Flat panel monitors are built to receive either an analog signal or a digital signal from the video card and have two ports on the monitor to accommodate either signal
Flat Panel Technology
LCD : Liquid Crystal Display
PDP: Plasma Display Panel
A gas plasma display
ELD: Electroluminescent display
LED: Light Emitting Diode

5. Display Subsystem Each PC’s display subsystem consists of three parts:
Video Display Adapter
creates and holds the image information
Monitor
displays the information
Cable
connects the video adapter to the monitor

6. Display Basics
Pixels
In a CRT display device, the smallest possible pixel is actually a dot trio called a triad
a red, green and blue phosphor dot set
RGB Model - most common model for PC video displays

7. Display Basics
An electronic beam is used to strike the phosphor causing it to emit light
Plates on the top, bottom and sides of the CRT tube control the direction of the beam
Depending on the intensity of the beam, the dot trio emits a range of colors created by mixing the 3 colors: red, blue and green

8. Computer Display Systems
CRT- Cathode Ray tube- the same technology employed by your television- an electron gun scans the screen causing special chemicals called ‘phosphors’ to glow- the gun scans from top to bottom, left to right
Video Adapter- an expansion board or integrated device that renders characters for display in response to commands from the computer- it tells the display device how to draw the graphic

9. Video Technologies
Monochrome- two color video- text only with a resolution of 720 x 350
Color Graphics Adapter- CGA- four colors- 320 x 200 resolution for graphics, 640 x 200 for two color
Enhanced Graphics Adapter- EGA- 16 colors- 320 x 200 graphics, 640 x 350 text
Video Graphics Array- VGA- introduced with the IBM AT form factor motherboards- used an analog signal- 256KB of video memory on board- 16 colors at 640 x 480 or 256 colors at 320 x 200
Super Video Graphics Array- introduced by the Video Electronics Standards Association- 65, 536 colors at 640 x 480, 256 colors at 800 x 600 or 16 colors at 1,024 x 768
Extended Graphics Array- IBM’s answer to the SVGA, XGA could only use the MCA expansion bus- it also used interlacing, or scanning every other line on each pass- offered the same resolution options as the SVGA

10. Display Quality Measurements
Dot Pitch- the shortest distance between two dots of the same color on the monitor
Measured in millimeters
The lower the number, the sharper the image
.28mm is considered average- anything smaller is great
Refresh Rate- vertical scan frequency- how many times in one second does the electron beam redraw the screen? The standard is 60Hz for VGA

11. Displays
Most desktop displays use a cathode ray tube (CRT), while portable computing devices such as laptops incorporate liquid crystal display (LCD)
Because of their slimmer design and smaller energy consumption, monitors using LCD technologies are beginning to replace the venerable CRT on many desktops

12. CRT Monitor
How a CRT monitor works

13. DAC Converters Digital-to-Analog (DAC) Converters
special integrated circuits used by display adapters

14. Two Ways to Paint Image on Screen:
Vector Displays
the electronic beam used to create the image is moved across the screen in a pattern similar to moving a pen or pencil over a piece of paper

15. Two Ways to Paint Image on Screen:
Raster-Scan
the screen is painted line by line from left to right
the electronic beam is played across the screen from left to right in a straight horizontal line - moves to left and goes to next line
Most CRTs and LCDs use Raster-Scan to paint images to screen

16. Liquid Crystal Displays
Active Matrix- each LCD pixel has a transistor behind it to activate or deactivate the crystal
Very crisp and easy on the eyes
Very power intensive- severely limited the amount of time a laptop could run on battery power
Passive Matrix- two rows of transistors marking the x and y coordinates of a grid- a signal voltage line is sent to the x and y coordinates, turning the corresponding pixel dark
Requires less power
Sacrifices image quality
Response of the screen to rapid change is poor
When Passing an electrical current through a semicrystalline liquid, the crystals would align themselves with the current
Submarining - an image, rather then moving, will disappear from spot and reappear in another

17. LCD panels
An LCD is made with either a passive matrix or an active matrix display display grid
The passive matrix LCD, which is older technology, has a grid of conductors with pixels located at each intersection in the grid.
The active matrix LCD is also known as a thin film transistor (TFT) display, which has a transistor located at each pixel intersection, requiring less current to control the luminance of a pixel.

18. LCD panels
A color LCD must have three subpixels with red, green and blue color filters to create each color pixel
Through the careful control and variation of the voltage applied, the intensity of each subpixel can range over 256 shades
Combining the subpixels produces a possible palette of 16.8 million colors

19. LCD technology
LCDs today employ several variations of liquid crystal technology, e.g. ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC)
Display size is limited by the quality-control problems faced by manufacturers
The more transistors that are put in display, the chances are that the will be defective
Manufacturers of existing large LCDs often reject about 40 percent of the panels that come off the assembly line

20. LCD Monitors
In general, an LCD panel is made of two polarized planes of glass placed at right angles (90 degrees) to each other.
Sandwiched between the glass is a layer of liquid crystals.
Behind the back panel is a fluorescent light source that tries to get through the two misaligned panels of glass.
In the default state, the light is blocked, and the panels appear black.
Unless there is a light behind the panel or a very bright light reflecting through the front panel and then off the back panel, an LCD cannot display anything.

21. LCD Monitors
The LCD monitors use the CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow) process of building colors
Triads of three crystals (each being able to pass only one primary color) are put together in a matrix
By turning on one of the crystals in each triad the same effect can be produced as with an electron beam and phosphorus in the CRT monitors

22. LCD Monitors
Each liquid crystal is in a matrix or grid (rows and columns) with very thin wires leading to a set of of switches along the top and side edges of the glass panels
When electric current is sent to a specific X-Y location on the grid, the liquid crystal is activated
LCD monitors can be passive matrix or active matrix

23. LCD Monitors Passive Matrix One transistor switch per row and column
That is, for an 640x480 VGA LCD panel, the monitor requires 640 transistor switches along the side and 480 transistor switches along the top to produce the 640x480 pixels or dots of light

24. LCD Monitors Active Matrix
The fundamental difference between the passive matrix and the active matrix is the number of transistor switches on the panel:
The active matrix gives every liquid crystal its own switch.
This speeds up the process of pinpointing a specific X-Y co-ordinate and also provides greater control over the crystal.

25. LCD Monitors The three main types of active-matrix LCD panels are:
TFT - Thin Film Transistors
MIM - Metal-Insulator-Metal
PALC - Plasma Addressed Liquid Crystal

26. Maximum Resolution and Dot Pitch
Dot Pitch is the measure of how much space there is between a display's pixels. When considering dot pitch, remember that smaller is better. Packing the pixels closer together is. fundamental to achieving higher resolutions
Resolution refers to the number of individual dots of color, known as pixels, contained on a display. Resolution is typically expressed by identifying the number of pixels on the horizontal axis (rows) and the number on the vertical axis (columns), such as 640x480

27. Resolution
For both monitors and printers we are interested in the resolution – how small are the pixels (tiny dots)?
Typical monitors have 640  480 or 800  600 with a screen size of inches (measured diagonally).
For printers the resolution is in pixels or dots per inch, typically 600 dpi for a laser printer.

28. Refresh Rate
In monitors based on CRT technology, the refresh rate is the number of times that the image on the display is drawn each second.
Refresh rates are very important because they control flicker, and you want the refresh rate as high as possible.
Too few cycles per second and you will notice a flickering, which can lead to headaches and eye strain.

29. Color Depth
The combination of the display modes supported by your graphics adapter and the color capability of your monitor determine how many colors can be displayed.
For example, a display that can operate in SVGA mode can display up to 16.8 million colors because it can process a 24-bit-long description of a pixel. The number of bits used to describe a pixel is known as its bit depth.
With a 24-bit bit depth, 8 bits are dedicated to each of the three additive primary colors -- red, green and blue. This bit depth is also called true color because it can produce the 10,000,000 colors discernible to the human eye
Simply put, color bit depth refers to the number of bits used to describe the color of a single pixel. The bit depth determines the number of colors that can be displayed at one time

30. 16,777,216 (True Color + Alpha Channel)
Color Depth Chart
Bit-Depth
Number of Colors 1
2 (monochrome) 2
4 (CGA) 4
16 (EGA) 8
256 (VGA) 16
65,536 (High Color, XGA) 24
16,777,216 (True Color, SVGA) 32
16,777,216 (True Color + Alpha Channel) 2

31. Things to Consider
Display technology - Currently, the choices are mainly between CRT and LCD technologies.
Cable technology - VGA and DVI are the two most common.
Viewable area (usually measured diagonally)
Aspect ratio and orientation (landscape or portrait)
Scan or Refresh Rate
Interlace Features
Dot pitch
Resolution
Color depth
Amount of power consumption

32. Features Two measures describe the size of your display:
The aspect ratio and the screen size.
Aspect Ratio: Most computer displays, like most televisions, have an aspect ratio of 4:3
This means that the ratio of the width of the display screen to the height is 4 to 3.
Screen Size
How to Measure
Desktop vs. Laptop

33. Features Scan or Refresh Rate, or vertical scan rate
The time it takes for the electronic beam to fill the screen with lines from top to bottom
The number of times that the image on the display is drawn each second.
If your CRT monitor has a refresh rate of 72 Hertz (Hz), then it cycles through all the pixels from top to bottom 72 times a second.
Control flicker
You want the refresh rate as high as possible
Standard rate established by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) is 70Hz, or 70 refreshes per second

34. Features Multiscan Interlace features
Multiscan monitors support a variety of refresh rates and can support different video cards
Fixed frequency monitors only support a single refresh rate
Interlace features
Interlaced monitors draw a screen in 2 passes, hitting the even lines first, then the odd lines
Non-interlaced monitors draw the entire screen in 1 pass

35. Features Dot Pitch The distance between adjacent dots on the screen.
The smaller the dot pitch, the higher the quality of the image.
A high-quality monitor should have a dot pitch of no more than .28mm
A display normally can support resolutions that match the physical dot (pixel) size as well as several lesser resolutions.
For example, a display with a physical grid of 1280 rows by 1024 columns can obviously support a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 pixels but it usually also supports lower resolutions such as 1024x768, 800x600, and 640x480.

36. Monitors
Resolution
A measure of how many dots on the screen are addressable by software
Each addressable location is called a pixel (picture element)
Most monitors offer a resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher
The video controller card as well as the monitor must be capable of supporting the chosen resolution.
Resolutions are set from the Control Panel in Windows 9X

37. Features
Color Depth
The combination of the display modes supported by your graphics adapter and the color capability of your monitor determine how many colors can be displayed.
Bit Depth : The number of bits used to describe a pixel is known as its bit depth.
For example: with a 24-bit bit depth, 8 bits are dedicated to each of the three additive primary colors -- red, green and blue. This bit depth is also called true color because it can produce the 10,000,000 discernible colors.

38. 16,777,216 (True Color + Alpha Channel)
Bit-Depth
Number of Colors 1
2 (monochrome) 2
4 (CGA) 4
16 (EGA) 8
256 (VGA) 16
65,536 (High Color, XGA) 24
10,000,000 (True Color, SVGA) 32
16,777,216 (True Color + Alpha Channel)

39. Features Power consumption Varies greatly with different technologies.
CRTs are somewhat power-hungry, at about 110 watts for a typical display, especially when compared to LCDs, which average between 30 and 40 watts.
Green monitor
In a typical home computer setup with a CRT-based display, the monitor accounts for over 80 percent of the electricity used!
Monitor that meets the EPA Energy Star program
Uses 100 to 150 watts of electricity with no more than 30 watts being used when the screen saver is on

40. Some Features of a Monitor
Monitors
Feature Description
Screen Size Typically 14, 15, 17 or 21 inch - refers to diagonal length of the lighted screen. It is often shorter than advertised.
Refresh Rate Vertical scan rate - time it takes an electronic beam to fill screen. Should be minimum of 70Hz (70 times/sec.)
Interlaced Only refreshes half the screen on every pass.
Dot Pitch Distance between adjacent dots. Ex: .28mm The smaller the pitch, the higher the quality.
Resolution How many spots or pixels are on screen. Ex: 640 x 480
Multiscan Monitors that offer a variety of refresh rates.
Green Monitor Supports EPA Energy Star program, uses no more than 30 watts and can go into sleep mode after inactivity.
Some Features of a Monitor

41. Monitors ELF (extremely low frequency) emissions
When matching a monitor to a video card, consider matching a
14-inch monitor with a low-end video card
15-inch monitor with a midrange card
17-inch or larger monitor with a high-end card for best performance

42. Display Adapter or Graphics Card
Creates and holds the image information
Older technology: specialized circuitry on the system board
Newer technology: a Plug-In Card - often referred to as the PC’s Video Card
Graphics cards are known by many names, such as:
Video cards
Video boards
Video display boards
Graphics boards
Graphics adapter cards
Video adapter cards
Graphics Accelerators

43. Display Adapter Standards
IBM original: MDA - Monochrome Display Adapter
MGA - Monochrome Graphic Adapter
CGA - Color Graphics Adapter
1981 – IBM - 4 colors
EGA - Enhanced Graphics Adapter
IBM integrated color and monochrome systems – 16 colors

44. Display Adapter Standards
VGA - Video Graphics Array
IBM
VGA became the industry standard and further extensions were developed:
SVGA - Super VGA
AVGA - Accelerated VGA - supports Windows Graphics
XGA – Extended Graphics Array
IBM

45. Display Adapter Standards
UXGA - Ultra Extended Graphics Array
Most displays sold today support the UXGA standard.
UXGA can support a palette of up to 16.8 million colors and resolutions of up to 1600x1200 pixels, depending on the video memory of the graphics card in your computer

46. Display Adapter Standards
A typical UXGA adapter
takes the digital data sent by application programs
stores it in video random access memory (VRAM) or some equivalent
uses a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to convert it to analog data for the display scanning mechanism
Once it is in analog form, the information is sent to the monitor through a VGA cable.

47. Display Adapter Standards
DVI – Digital Video Interface
Since today's VGA adapters do not fully support the use of digital monitors, a new standard, Digital Video Interface (DVI) has been designed for this purpose.
DVI keeps data in digital form from the computer to the monitor, virtually eliminating signal loss (degradation).
Will need a DVI monitor with a DVI compliant graphics card.

48. Graphics/Video Card An expansion card responsible for
Receiving data and instructions from the CPU
Processing the data
Sending the results to the monitor
Two main features of a video card
The bus it uses (influences speed and performance)
Amount of video RAM it has or can support

49. Four basic functions of a video card
Graphics/Video Card
Four basic functions of a video card

50. Video Card Performance
Performance on the video card is affected by:
Chip set
Memory
RAM DAC
Bus speed and size
Methods of improving performance
Dual-porting
Place a processor on the video card to make it a graphics accelerator

51. Graphics Accelerator
A type of video card that has its own processor to boost performance
Necessary with the demands that graphic applications make in the multimedia environment
Processor is specifically designed to manage video and graphics
Their features reduce the burden on the system board CPU and perform the function much faster than the system board CPU

52. Graphics Accelerator Features
MPEG decoding
3-D graphics
Dual porting
Color space conversion
Interpolated scaling
EPA green PC support
Digital output to flat panel display monitors
Applications support for popular high-intensity graphics software

53. Video Memory
Necessary to handle large volume of data generated by increased resolution and color
Stored on video cards as memory chips

54. How Much Video Memory Is Needed?
Determined by
Screen resolution (measured in pixels)
Number of colors (color depth)
Enhancements to color information called alpha blending

55. Types of Video Memory VRAM (video RAM) MDRAM (multibank DRAM)
SGRAM (synchronous graphics RAM)
WRAM (Window RAM)
3D RAM