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The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 9:37 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet by rahvin
Parent article: The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Do computer displays 'refresh'? I thought that went away with CRTs. If an LCD monitor is showing a static image, the pixels just sit there and do not change state or flicker.

I agree that E-ink is easier to read, perhaps because it's a passive display using ambient light rather than a backlight (which may indeed flicker at a certain frequency). It's a pity that no common GUI has a usable option for white text on a black background, except in terminal windows.

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White on black

Posted Aug 1, 2012 11:15 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link]

I am sure Windows has, and definitely KDE has (testing it right now.)

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 12:41 UTC (Wed) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

KDE even comes with several color themes that use light text colors on dark backgrounds. Takes about 6 mouseclicks to change it. So what do you define as "common GUI"?

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 14:04 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

"common GUI" would mean one with at least five per cent market share, which excludes KDE. I know that in the free software world there are many more options for customizing the display, and indeed I do as much as possible inside Emacs or a terminal window, with white text on black. I was lamenting that the more widespread graphical environments (MS Windows, Android, iOS, Mac OS and so on) tend not to have a simple option to change everything to white on black.

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 12:58 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Do computer displays 'refresh'? I thought that went away with CRTs. If an LCD monitor is showing a static image, the pixels just sit there and do not change state or flicker.

Actually they still flicker. Backlight typically operates at 200Hz speed and this is hard to perceive, but it's there, all right.

The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 1, 2012 22:44 UTC (Wed) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

Well, new data is continuously transmitted over the DVI/HDMI/DP/VGA/what-have-you. It's probably still the case that 8-bit color resolution is still reached by shifting between the fundamental color's 6-bit values in some predetermined pattern that averages to the right brightness value over time. The backlight is probably rapidly toggled between full power and no power duty cycle according to desired brightness level.

So yes. I expect there's a lot of what we'd call refreshing, one way or other.


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