Supercomputer

Other video display options

CRT

Older cathode ray tube (CRT) displays are still around; usually they‘re older Analogue TVs or VGA monitors. They‘re bulky, generally offer lower resolutions, and look very dated but can be a low-cost option in areas where appearance is secondary.

Projected

A front or rear LCD/DLP projector is a compact device that projects an image on a screen. These devices are handy for trade shows, meetings, or anywhere it would be impractical to bring along a full-sized monitor.

OLED

Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are the displays of the future. They‘re lightweight, thin, and energy-saving but not yet available at a price that makes them practical for general use.

Video-wall specific displays

These can be LED video cubes or rear projection cubes that are designed to be stacked on one another for a virtually seamless video wall display.

Factors to consider when choosing a display

Picture quality

Plasma displays reproduce colour more accurately with deeper blacks and display moving images with remarkable clarity. They provide excellent performance with their high-contrast levels and colour saturation, and have the edge when it comes to viewing angles. In fact, plasma screens have as much as a 160° viewing angle, whereas LCDs display at 130–140° angles. However, they also carry the risk of image burn-in (the permanent disfiguring of a screen image caused by the continuous display of a high-contrast object). LCD displays, on the other hand, don‘t have quite the colour accuracy of plasmas, but they‘re brighter and have a sharpness advantage with a higher number of pixels per square inch. These additional pixels make LCD technology better at displaying static images from computers or VGA sources in full-colour detail. Applications with large amounts of data and written material display particularly well on LCDs. What‘s more, there‘s no risk of image burn-in.