The Basic Guide to Fast Response Time
Why do I need a monitor with a fast response time?
If you like playing games or watching fast moving films, a monitor with a fast response time is essential. You don’t want blurring and trails moving across your screen every time there is a quick movement. Obviously the more serious you take your picture quality the faster the response time you demand. Monitors are available in 16ms / 8ms and now the ultra fast response time of 3ms and 1ms.How will it benefit me?
If watching fast moving images, a monitor with a fast response time will eliminate visible smearing, common on slower moving LCDs.How does it work?
Basically an LCD monitor is made up of liquid crystal cells (LCDs). These cells change from active (black) to inactive (white) and return to active again (black) to form the overall image that you see on your monitor. The speed at which these LCDs react is called the response time and this is measured in milliseconds (ms).The lower the number the faster the change. So a monitor with a response time of 1ms is faster than one with 8ms.
What is the difference between fast response time and frames per second?
They are both used to measure image speed. Fast response time is the number of milliseconds it takes for the LCD cells to change from active to inactive and back again. The lower the response time figure the faster the reaction. Frames per second (fps) is the theoretical value for the supported number of image changes per second. The higher the frame rates the faster the image changes.Dividing one second (1000ms) by the response time gives the maximum supported number of frames per second.
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The Advanced guide to Fast Response Time
How does ViewSonic achieve these fast response times?
ViewSonic employs various technologies to improve response time:
1.Lower Viscosity 2.Reduced LC Cell Gap 3.Amplified Impulse™ Technology Driving methodLower Viscosity
Liquid crystal is by nature a fairly thick fluid that can also exhibit the properties of a solid. Using a lower viscosity type of LCD material improves the response time. The thinner the fluid, the faster it flows and the faster the response time.
Reducing LC Cell Gap
Reducing the cell gap by 30% gives a 50% faster response time.Advantage: Fewer amount of liquid crystal material equals fewer LCDs to re-orientate themselves therefore giving a faster response time.
Amplified Impulse™ Driving Method ;
This method involves switching from “white” (inactive) to “black” (active) or reversed starting with a higher level voltage and then reducing to the required level, thus kick starting the LC motion. Like over-revving (and slipping the clutch) to get a vehicle in motion. This revolutionary technology results in balanced response times across the entire range of possible transitions.
How do we measure optical response time?
The optical response time can lag behind the electrical command to the pixel by varying amounts of time. This will have virtually no impact when using stationary applications, but with fast motion video like that in TV, DVD, movies and games this can result in blurring and ghosting images. This diagram shows the time taken from the light optic being turned on to being turned off.
Why is grayscale response time important?
“Real world” video content contains a combination of grayscale images. It generally takes longer to transfer to an intermediate level of intensity i.e. gray than it does to turn completely black or completely white.
ViewSonic has addressed this problem with our ClearMotiv™ video technology which offers frame rates exceeding 125 fps (8ms) and now more than 1000fps (1ms), which offers faster response times for both the black/white and grayscale transitions.