Talk:Usability for Nerds/Hardware/Screen

Agner, would you like to modify the refresh rate statement so it would differentiate between the refresh rate itself (which is not "harmful") and flickering due to PWM-regulated backlighting (which is harmful, and should be avoided altogether, at least for more expensive models, for the reasons stated in the other section) ? IMHO, the whole section requires rewriting at this point. A few more facts to you (if you don't know): The resolution of a human eye is about 500M, the convenient (noticeable) resolution for displays up to 32'' is 300dpi, the other "researches" is a marketing lie. You can search Wikipedia to discover that ~4k display was available back in 2001, but most likely it was delayed to sell a few generations to customers - the actual limit is stated above and is achievable, especially in the light of what you see now (i.e. now they are forced to sell "higher resolution", a bit higher, even though they can actually produce the models with the above resolution, in a few years they would probably be forced to actually make them).


 * Thank you for discussing rather than just editing. Do you have a source on PWM flickering being harmful? Does this also apply to LEDs? It would be interesting to have some facts about what PWM frequency to recommend. Agnerf (discuss • contribs) 18:45, 27 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Other than my own attempts to find the truth and common sense, as well as some Internet discussion and my own experiments, essentially there is no "official" source. You can't request "sources" on such things, because the research topics have one huge disadvantage - they had to be sponsored by someone and then gain credibility through certain institutes. Therefore you can't expect "sources" for whatever is not beneficial to the sponsors, for economic reasons. Give up on that (the academic approach would not work when you face intentionally distorted information about politically or whatever "incorrect" things, which may cause disadvantage to the research sponsors) and use indirect sources and the results of your own comparison. In my own experiments I was able to identify PWM up to 30KHz, in special conditions and on specially selected images (for static "viewing" it is only ~120Hz though), while switching the focus from one selected point to another. Judging by the forum discussions about "discomfort" I came to the conclusion that the upper limit is somewhere in 100KHz.


 * The "hafmfulness" is subjective, it may be harmful for some people only, for the rest it would be a little discomfort while working for many hours, which is close to the measurable limit. The harm is evident only for static image perception below 120Hz. For luminescent tubes, you have afterglow, so PWM in the range of some kiloherzs is not a problem, as actually there is no flickering to near "zero" level. What I really meant is LED - they don't have such afterglow, and the brightness drops greatly during the periods with no current. So they cause much more harm, and therefore PWM should not be used there for high end models. The reason for PWM from my trolling and compromising high-level marketing representatives appears to be the system, when they get rewards for cutting the overall expenses just for a few cents. It would cost about ~20 USD more per average LCD to make it PWM-free while retaining the color performance - due to the system of "lowering expenses" rewards they would rather silence that than implement (when they get "rewards" even for a few cents cut), however, due to efforts of bringing such facts to wider public, in which I took some part, they started designing "flicker-free" displays now - in economic terms when the overall damage of public hatred exceeds those 20USD, they may cut the expenses by opening a market share with "flicker-free" models - which is essentially the results of informational warfare on the side of customers or consumers. As you can see, the reasoning in this case is rather complex, that is why I restrained myself from editing - you can also add what you know and put it all together from the name of the author (you).

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Ironic quote from this page:

"A too bright white background should therefore be avoided. A light text on a dark background is more comfortable to read."

... in tiny black font on a bright white page ;)

GreenAsJade (discuss • contribs) 04:52, 6 July 2016 (UTC)