Multimedia

Principles

Chapter 3

Visual Display Unit

TMH Chapter - 3 1
 Visual Display Unit
Introduction
ƒ The primary user interface hardware for displaying these visual media is
the Visual Display System (VDS).

ƒ The VDS enables us to generate, process and present these visual

media. It also plays a role in deciding the quality of the final
presentation.

ƒ The VDS consist of following components :

ƒ · Monitor, where we view the visual media and the final presentation
ƒ · Video Adapter Card, an expansion card serving as an interface
between the processor and the monitor.
ƒ · Video Adapter Cable, which connects and transmits signals between
the adapter card and the monitor.
TMH Chapter - 3 2
 Visual Display Unit
CRT
ƒ By far the most common type of monitor used with the
multimedia desktop systems is based on the picture tube called
the cathode ray tube (CRT)

ƒ It is essentially a vacuum sealed glass tube containing two

electrodes inside it, the cathode (K) or negative electrode and
the anode (A) or positive electrode

ƒ The front face of the tube is coated with a chemical compound

called phosphor arranged in the form of a rectangular grid of a
large number of dots.

TMH Chapter - 3 3
 Visual Display Unit
CRT

TMH Chapter - 3 4
 Visual Display Unit
CRT
ƒ The material phosphor has a property of emitting a glow of light
when it is hit by charged particles like electrons.

ƒ The phosphor dots called pixels, short for picture elements, are
responsible for producing an image on the monitor screen.

ƒ Other positive electrodes called grids (G1, G2, G3) are located
near the cathode.

ƒ Near the neck of the CRT are two coils of wire known as the
deflection coils.

TMH Chapter - 3 5
 Visual Display Unit
CRT
ƒ Electron beams generated from the cathode are made to hit the
phosphor dots generating spots of light and thereby producing
the image.

ƒ The control grid (G1) helps to control the amount of electrons in

the beam and thereby determine its strength, the accelerating
grid (G2) provides acceleration to the electrons in the forward
direction and the focusing grid (G3) focuses the beam to a single
point on the screen ahead

ƒ The horizontal deflection coil moves the beam horizontally

across the screen and the other coil called the vertical deflection
coil moves the beam vertically along the height of the screen.

TMH Chapter - 3 6
 Visual Display Unit
CRT
ƒ To draw an image on the screen the electron beam starts from the
upper left corner of the screen and sequentially moves over each pixel
row from left to right. This is referred to as forward trace.

ƒ At the end of each horizontal line the beam gets switched OFF and
retraces diagonally to the beginning of the next row. This phase is
referred to as horizontal retrace.

ƒ The process continues until the beam reaches the lower right corner of
the screen, after which it is again switched OFF and moves diagonally
back to the starting point. This is referred to as vertical refresh. The
entire process from beginning to end is called raster scanning

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 Visual Display Unit
CRT

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 Visual Display Unit
CRT
ƒ The electron beam is said to produce a complete frame of picture
when starting from the top-left corner it moves over all the pixels
and returns back to the starting point.

ƒ The human brain has the capability to hold on to the image of an

object before our eyes for a fraction of a second even after the
object has been removed from before our eyes. This
phenomenon is called persistence of vision.

ƒ So if the beam can come back to the pixel before its glow has
completely disappeared, to us it will seem that the pixel is
glowing continuously.
TMH Chapter - 3 9
 Visual Display Unit
CRT
ƒ It has been observed that we see a steady image on the screen
only if about 50 - 60 frames are generated on the screen per
second.

ƒ The working principle of a color CRT is similar to that of a

monochrome CRT, except that here each pixel consists of three
colored dots instead of one and is called a triad.

ƒ These processed phosphors produce lights of colors red, green

and blue (in short, RGB) and are called primary colors.

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 Visual Display Unit
CRT
ƒ The colors, magenta, cyan and yellow, produced by mixing equal
proportions of primary colors, are called secondary colors.

ƒ All the three colors in equal proportion produce the color called
white, while their absence leads to the color sensation called
black.

ƒ A perforated screen called a shadow mask prevents the beams

from falling in the gap between the dots.

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 Visual Display Unit
CRT

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 Visual Display Unit
CRT
ƒ Interlacing is a technique by which monitors of lower refresh
rates can be made to produce images comparable in quality to
that produced by monitors of higher refresh rates.

ƒ To reduce the flicker each frame produced by a raster scan is

split into two halves. Each of the halves is known as a field.

ƒ The first field is made up of only odd-numbered pixel rows

i.e.1,3,5,… and is called the odd-field. The second field is made
up of even-numbered pixel rows i.e. 2,4,6,… and is called the
even-field.

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 Visual Display Unit
CRT

TMH Chapter - 3 14
 Visual Display Unit
CRT
ƒ Since each field is made up of only half the total number of pixel
rows, generating a field takes only half the duration as that for
generating a frame.

ƒ Due to persistence of vision this kind of arrangement leads to a

smooth blending of the rows of each field and helps to reduce
the flickering effect prominent is monitors of low refresh rates.

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 Visual Display Unit
CRT
Monitor Specifications

ƒ Refresh Rate (or Vertical Scan Rate)

This is defined as the number of frames displayed by a monitor in one

second and measured in a unit called Hertz (Hz).

ƒ Horizontal Scan Rate

This is defined as the number of horizontal lines displayed by the

monitor in one second. It is measured as the product of the refresh rate
and the number of horizontal lines on the screen, and expressed in
Hertz (Hz).

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 Visual Display Unit
CRT
Monitor Specifications

ƒ Dot Pitch

This is defined as the shortest distance between two neighbouring

pixels (for monochrome monitors) or triads (for color monitors). It is
usually of the order of 0.25 mm to 0.4 mm.

ƒ Pixel Addressability

It is defined as the total number of pixels that can be addressed on the

screen. It is measured by the product of number of horizontal pixel rows
and the number of pixels per row.
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 Visual Display Unit
CRT
Monitor Specifications

ƒ Aspect Ratio

This is defined as the ratio of the horizontal number of pixels (number of

pixels along a horizontal row) to the vertical number of pixels (number of
horizontal rows of pixels).

ƒ Monitor Size

The size of the monitor is defined as the longest diagonal length of the
monitor. Standard computer monitors are usually between 15 inches to
20 inches in size.

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 Visual Display Unit
CRT
Monitor Specifications

ƒ Resolution

This is defined as the total number of pixels per unit length of the
monitor in the horizontal direction. It is expressed in a unit called dots
per inch (dpi). Standard monitors usually have a resolution between 72
dpi and 96 dpi.

ƒ Color Depth

This is a measure of the total number of colors that can be displayed on

a monitor and depends on the total number of varying intensities of the
electron beam of a CRT. A monitor with a color depth of 8 bits can
display a total of 28 or 256 colors.
TMH Chapter - 3 19
 Visual Display Unit
Adapter Card
ƒ The video adapter is an expansion card which usually sits on a
slot on the motherboard, although nowadays it can also be found
integrated with the motherboard.

ƒ It acts as an interface between the processor of the computer

and the monitor.

ƒ The digital data required for creating an image on the screen is

generated by the central processor of the computer and consists
of RGB values for each pixel on the screen. These are called
pixel attributes.

TMH Chapter - 3 20
 Visual Display Unit
Adapter Card
ƒ The adapter interprets these intensity values and translates them
into the corresponding voltage levels to drive the electron gun of
the monitor.

ƒ These intensity signals along with two synchronization signals for

positioning the electron beam at the location of the pixel, are fed
to the monitor from the adapter through the video cable.

ƒ The Video Graphics Array (VGA) adapter was a standard

introduced by IBM in 1987 which was capable of displaying text
and graphics in 16 colors at 640 × 480 mode

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 Visual Display Unit
Adapter Card
ƒ The VGA adapter was connected to a VGA compatible monitor
using a video cable with a 15-pin connector. The pins on the
connector carried various signals from the card to the monitor.

ƒ The industry extended the VGA standard to include improved

capabilities like supporting 800 × 600 or 1024 × 768 viewing
modes on the screen.

ƒ The color depths also increased to 15-bits (consisting of 2^15 or

32768 colors), 16-bits (65536 colors) and 24-bits (16.7 million
colors). All of these standards were collectively called the Super
VGA or SVGA.
TMH Chapter - 3 22
 Visual Display Unit
Adapter Card
ƒ The video adapter card contains a number of essential
components for converting the digital data from the processor
into analog signals before sending them to the monitor.

ƒ Display Memory
A bank of memory within the adapter card used for storing pixel
attributes. Initially used for storing the image data from the CPU
and later used by the adapter to generate RGB signals for the
monitor. Also known as VRAM.

ƒ Graphics Controller
A chip within the adapter card, responsible for coordinating the
activities of all other components of the card.
TMH Chapter - 3 23
 Visual Display Unit
Adapter Card
ƒ The digital to analog converter (DAC) is one of the main reasons
why the adapter is there. It takes the final digital data from the
VRAM and converts it to analog signals before sending them
outwards to the monitor.

ƒ To combat the eventual saturation of the PCI bus with video

information a new interface called Accelerated Graphics Port
(AGP) has been pioneered by Intel designed specifically for the
video subsystem.

ƒ AGP gets around these problems by two approaches. First it

removes the pressure from the existing PCI bus by providing an
additional high-speed bus exclusively for transferring video data.

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 Visual Display Unit
Adapter Card

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 Visual Display Unit
Adapter Card
ƒ Second, the AGP removes the limitations due to the video
memory, by allowing part of the main memory to be used for
storing video data.

ƒ AGP is ideal for transferring the huge amount of data required for
displaying 3D graphics and animation, and has helped to remove
bandwidth overheads from the PCI bus.

ƒ The video adapter card is connected to the monitor with the

video adapter cable. The cable plugs to the card using a 15-pin
D-type connector.

TMH Chapter - 3 26
 Visual Display Unit
Adapter Card
ƒ It carries the video signals (one for monochrome and three for
color) from the adapter card to the monitor where these are used
to activate the electron beams of the electron gun.

ƒ Additionally the cable also carries two synchronization signals

(horizontal and vertical) which are fed to the deflection coils on
the neck of the CRT to control the movement of the electron
beams.

TMH Chapter - 3 27
 Visual Display Unit
LCD
ƒ Liquid crystals were first discovered in 1888 by Austrian botanist
Freidrich Reinitzer and the term liquid crystal was coined by
German physicist Otto Lehmann.

ƒ The liquid crystal is a transparent organic substance consisting

of long rod-like molecules. It was found that the substance has
properties for manipulating direction of light rays flowing through
it.

ƒ An LCD monitor is a collection of LCD elements, each element

generating a pixel on the screen, analogous to the phosphor dots
on a CRT screen.
TMH Chapter - 3 28
 Visual Display Unit
LCD
ƒ An LCD element consist of two major components : (1) a layer of
liquid crystal sandwiched between two finely grooved surfaces
with their grooves perpendicular to each other and (2) two optical
polarizing filters perpendicular to each other.

ƒ A layer of liquid crystal material is placed in a container with two

finely grooved surfaces whose grooves are perpendicular to
each other.

ƒ Thus the molecules at the two surfaces are aligned

perpendicular to each other and those at the intermediate layers
are twisted by intermediate angles.
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 Visual Display Unit
LCD

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 Visual Display Unit
LCD
ƒ Natural light waves are oriented at random angles and flow along
various planes from the light source. An optical polarizing filter or
polarizer can isolate a single plane of light from the collection.

ƒ The container with grooved surfaces is placed in between two

perpendicular polarizing filters. Normally light from the first filter
would be blocked by the second filter.

ƒ However in this case the liquid crystal material placed in

between twists the plane of light by 90 degrees as it passes
through the material due to its molecular alignments.

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 Visual Display Unit
LCD
ƒ The light now is parallel to the second filter and comes out wholly
through it to the eye of the observer. This constitutes a lighted
pixel on the screen.

ƒ A battery connected across the liquid crystal container generates

a current through the liquid crystal, and re-orients its molecules
according to the direction of the current flow.

ƒ This disturbs the orderly pattern of the liquid crystal molecules,

so that now the molecules at the grooved surfaces are no longer
twisted by 90 degrees.

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 Visual Display Unit
LCD
ƒ Polarized light through the first filter gets twisted by a different
angle by the liquid crystal when it reaches the second filter,
through which it can no longer emerge.

ƒ An observer on the other side of the filter does not see any light
coming out. This arrangement creates a dark pixel.

ƒ Images on the LCD screen can be displayed by using a large

number of such cells, each functioning as a lighted or dark pixel,
depending on whether the corresponding batteries are switched
off or on.

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 Visual Display Unit
LCD
ƒ The less expensive passive matrix LCD use one electrode for
each row and each column.

ƒ Although the construction of the passive matrix display is simple,

the major drawback is the lack in brightness and contrast of the
screen.

ƒ The more expensive active matrix LCD uses separate electrodes

for each LCD element that can be independently controlled.

ƒ This allows precise controlling of each cell and minimizes refresh

problems, leading to overall improved brightness and contrast
features
TMH Chapter - 3 34
 Visual Display Unit
CRT vs. LCD
ƒ The CRT based devices are quite bulky and heavy because of
the picture tube, and appropriate for table-top systems but
difficult to be carried around.

ƒ In comparison, the LCD devices uses a matrix of LCD cells

which are quite small and take approximately a third of the
volume of a CRT with comparable screen sizes.

ƒ Due to the high voltage needed for activating a CRT, power

consumption in CRT devices are quite high. Adequate heat
emission and cooling arrangements are also to be taken into
consideration.
TMH Chapter - 3 35
 Visual Display Unit
CRT vs. LCD
ƒ By contrast, the LCD devices uses a small amount of current in
each cell and total power consumption of LCD devices are just a
fraction of that in CRT devices.

ƒ The LCD cells are minute structures which are difficult to

fabricate. A large percentage of the manufactured cells have
some defects in them and are discarded. This makes the LCD
fabrication process expensive.

ƒ In a CRT screen, the light produced is emitted directly by the

phosphor material and therefore appreciable amount of
brightness. In contrast LCD screens do not emit light, they can
only block light flowing through them.

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 Visual Display Unit
CRT vs. LCD
ƒ In CRT screens all the light emitted from the phosphor dots are
visible by the observer, and there are usually no viewing
problems.

ƒ In LCD screens however, only single planes of light are isolated

as part of the polarization process, which reduces the viewing
angle to the observer.

TMH Chapter - 3 37
 Visual Display Unit
PDP
ƒ Plasma (also called an ionized gas) is an energetic gas-phase state of
matter, often referred to as "the fourth state of matter", in which some or
all of the electrons in the outer atomic orbitals have become separated
from the atom.

ƒ A Plasma Display Panel (PDP) is an emissive (i.e. discharge of

electromagnetic radiation or particles) flat panel display where light is
created by phosphors excited by a plasma discharge between two flat
panels of glass.

ƒ One advantage of the PDP is that the light produced is extremely bright
and thus they are mostly used for glow signs. A disadvantage is that
they consume a large amount of power to ionise the gas.

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