1.

VIDEO DISPLAY DEVICES

a) CRT
- Refresh CRT
- Color CRT
b) DVST
2. Raster & Random scan display
Video Display Devices
1. Cathode Ray Tube (CRT)

2. Direct View Storage Tube (DVST)

3. Flat-panel display

Liquid Crystal Device (LCD)

Light Emitting Diode (LED)
1. VIDEO DISPLAY DEVICES

 Primary output device in a graphics system is a video

monitor.

 The operation of most video monitor is based on the

standard Cathode Ray Tube(CRT)

 There are 2 types of CRT Monitors:

 Refresh CRT Monitors
 Color CRT Monitors
Refresh CRT (cathode ray tube)

Basic design of magnetic CRT

Working of CRT

 The electron gun emits a beam of electrons called cathode rays.

 This electron beam passes through the focusing and deflection

systems that directs the beam towards specified positions on the
phosphor coated screen.

 When the beam strikes a position on the screen, the phosphor

emits a small spot of light at that position.

 The light emitted by phosphor disappears very rapidly

 One way to keep the phosphor glowing is to redraw the
picture repeatedly by quickly directing the electron beam
back over the same positions.

 Such a type of display is called a refresh CRT.

CRT

 The refresh rate is the number of times a display's image is

repainted or refreshed per second.
Steps :
 focus an electron gun on a phosphor screen produces a
bright spot

 scan the spot back and forth, up and down to cover the
whole screen

 vary the intensity of the electron beam to change the

intensity of the spot

 repeat this fast enough and humans see a continuous

picture
 Operation of an electron Gun

• The primary components of an electron gun in a CRT are ::

 Heated metal cathode
 A control grid
 Contd...

 Heat is supplied to the cathode by directing a current through a

coil of wire called filament, inside the cathode
 This causes electrons to be boiled off the hot cathode surface

 The free negatively charged electrons produced from the cathode

are accelerated toward the phosphor coating by a high positive
voltage generated from accelerating anode.

 Control grid is a metal cylinder that fits over the cathode, it is

used for controlling the intensity of this electron beam (by setting
voltage levels).
 The focusing system is to make the electron beam to
converge into a small spot in the screen as it strikes the
phosphor.

 Otherwise the electrons would repel each other & beam

would spread out as it strikes the phosphor

 The amount of light emitted by the phosphor coating

depends on the number of electrons striking the screen

 The brightness of a display can be controlled by varying

the voltage on control grid
Problem with focusing
 To keep the beam in focus at all screen positions,
additional focusing h/w is used in high-precision systems

 The radius of curvature of most CRTs is > distance from

the focusing system to screen center

 Thus the electron beam will be focused properly only at the

center of the screen

 As the beam moves towards the outer edges of the screen,

displayed images become blurred
Deflection of electron beam
How it works??? (in detail)

 Spots of light are produced on the screen by the transfer of

CRT beam energy to phosphor

 When electrons in the beam collide with the phosphor

coating, they are stopped & their kinetic energy is absorbed
by the phosphor

 Part of beam energy is converted by friction into heat energy

& remaining energy causes electrons in phosphor atoms to
move up to higher quantum levels

 After a short time, the “excited” phosphor electrons begin

dropping back to stable ground state, giving up their extra
energy as small quantum's of light energy
Persistence
 Different kinds of phosphors are available for use in CRT,
major difference b/w phosphors is their persistence

 Persistence means how long they continue to emit light

after the CRT beam is removed

 ie, time to which the phosphors in the CRTs emit light

until the next electrons is fired

 A phosphor with low persistence is useful for animation.

High persistence phosphor is used for displaying highly
complex, static pictures
Resolution

 The maximum number of points that can be displayed without

overlap on a CRT is referred to as the resolution

 Resolution is the no. of points per cm that can be plotted

horizontally & vertically (total no. of points in each direction)

 So there is no overlap b/w points, ie to produce an image

without blurred

 Typical resolution in high quality systems is 1280 by 1024

(width * height ) in pixels
Aspect Ratio

 This gives the ratio of vertical points to horizontal points

necessary to produce equal length lines in both directions
on the screen.

 An aspect ratio of ¾ means that a vertical line plotted with

3 points has the same length as a horizontal line plotted
with 4 points.
 II. COLOR CRT MONITORS
 A CRT monitor displays color pictures by using a combination
of phosphors that emit different colored light.

 By combining the emitted light from the different phosphors a

range of colors can be generated
 24 bits/pixel

 Two methods for producing color displays with a CRT are

(a) the beam penetration method and
(b) shadow mask method.
 (a)Beam penetration method

 It has been used with random scan monitors.

 Two layers of phosphor usually red and green are coated

inside the phosphor screen

 The displayed color depends on how far the electron beam

penetrates into the phosphor layers

 A beam of slow electrons excites only the inner green layer.

 A beam of very fast electrons penetrates through the green
layer and excites the outer red layer
 At intermediate speeds, combinations of red and green light
are emitted to show two additional colors, orange and yellow.

 The speed of the electrons and hence the screen color at any
point is controlled by the beam acceleration voltage.
 Dis-adv
 Only 4 color possible
 Quality of picture is not good
(b) shadow-mask method

 These are usually used in raster scan systems because they

produce a much wide range of colors than beam penetration
method

 A shadow mask CRT has 3 phosphor color dots at each pixel

position. (red, blue and green)

 One phosphor dot emits red light, another emits green light &
third one emits blue light

 Three electron guns are there for each color

 Shadow mask grid just behind phosphor screen
 The color we see depends on the amount of excitation of
red, green & blue phosphors

 White (grey) is the result of activating all 3 dots with equal

intensity

 Yellow : green + red dots

 Magenta : blue + red dots
 Cyan : blue + green
 2 types of shadow-mask method :
 Delta-delta method
 Inline method
Delta-delta shadow mask CRT
 In this method, CRT has 3 electron guns

 The 3 electron beams are deflected and focused as a group

on to the shadow mask

 Shadow mask is a metal sheet contains a series of holes

aligned with the phosphor dot patterns

 When the 3 beams pass through a hole in the shadow mask

they activate a dot triangle that appears as a small color
spot on the screen
 A CRT monitor contains millions of tiny red, green, and blue
phosphor dots that glow when struck by an electron beam
that travels across the screen to create a visible image

 The shadow mask helps to control the electron beams so that

the beams strike the correct phosphor at just the right
intensity to create the desired colors and image on the
display. The unwanted beams are blocked or "shadowed.“
shadowed
 Phosphors don't glow for long, though.

 Once the guns have scanned the whole screen, they repeat
the process—typically, 60 to 80 times a second. (This
number is what is known as the refresh rate.)
Inline Method :
 Same technique as delta-delta
 3 electron guns and corresponding RGB color dots are
aligned along one scan line instead of a triangular pattern

 This is easier to keep in alignment and is commonly used

in high resolution CRT
 Difference between Beam Penetration and Shadow Mask method.

Beam Penetration method Shadow Mask method

Where Used It is used with Random Scan System to display color. It is Used With Raster Scan System to display color.

It can displays Only four colors i.e. Red , Green, Orange

Colors it can display Millions of colors.
and Yellow.

Less colors are available because the colors in Beam Millions of colors are available because the colors
Color Dependency
Penetration depends on the speed of the electron beam. in Shadow Mask depends on the type of the ray.

Cost It is Less Expensive as compared to Shadow Mask. It is More Expensive than other methods.

Quality of  picture is not so good i.e. Poor with Beam Shadow Mask gives realism in picture with shadow effect
Picture Quality
Penetration Method. and millions of color.

Resolution It gives High Resolution. It gives Low Resolution.

In Beam Penetration method, Color display depends on

In Shadow Mask Method, there are no such criteria for
Criteria how far electron excites outer Red layer and then Green
producing colors. It is used in computers, in color TV etc.
layer.
Raster scan & Random scan display
 In CRT, 2 methods are used to display the image

 They are :
 Raster scan display
 Random scan display
Raster scan display

 Used in television screens

 In raster-scan, electron beam is swept across the screen, one

row at a time from top to bottom

 As the electron beam moves across each row the beam

intensity is turned ON and OFF to create a pattern of
illuminated spots
 Picture definition is stored in a memory area called
refresh buffer or frame buffer

 This memory area holds the set of intensity values for all
the screen points.

 Each screen point is referred to as a pixel.

pixel (picture
element)
 Frame buffer stores the intensity values

 Intensity values may be either ON or OFF

 Stored intensity values are then retrieved from the refresh

buffer & painted on the screen one row at a time

Eg: home television sets & printers

 The refresh rate is the number of times a display's image is

repainted or refreshed per second.
Bit value 1 indicates beam is to be turned ON at that position
Bit value 0 indicates beam is to be turned OFF at that position
COLOR RED GREEN BLUE
BLACK 0 0 0
BLUE 0 0 1
GREEN 0 1 0
CYAN 0 1 1
RED 1 0 0
MAGENTA 1 0 1
YELLOW 1 1 0
WHITE 1 1 1
 Black and white system one bit per pixel, the frame buffer
commonly called BITMAP

 System with multiple bits per pixel, the frame buffer

referred to as a PIXMAP
2. Random Scan display

 Also called Calligraphic, Vector, Stroke, Line drawing

displays

 electron beam directed only to the parts of the screen

where a picture is to be drawn

 Draw a picture one line at a time

 Lines can be drawn in any order

 Picture definition is stored as a set of line drawing commands in
the memory called as display list or display program or refresh
buffer.

 To display a specified picture, the system cycles through the set

of commands in refresh buffer, drawing each component line in
turn

 After all line drawing commands in the display file is processed

the system cycles back to the first line command in the list.

 Random scan systems are designed for line drawing applications

and cannot display realistic shaded scenes
Refresh buffer (display file) in Random
scan
Disadvantages
 Designed for line drawing applications & cannot display
realistic shaded scenes

 ie, we cannot draw curves

 No horizontal or vertical retrace

 Only stationary objects can be drawn

 II. Direct-View Storage Tubes (DVST)

 An alternative maintaining a screen image is to store the

picture information inside the CRT instead of refreshing the
screen.

 DVST stores the picture information as a charge distribution

just behind the phosphor coated screen

 Two electron guns are used in a DVST. One called the

primary gun is used to store the picture pattern.

 The second, the flood gun, maintains the picture display.

DVST
 Pictures drawn on there will be seen for several minutes
(40-50 minutes) before fading
 It is similar to CRT as far as the electronic gun and phosphor-
coated mechanisms are concerned.

 But instead of electron beam directly writing the pictures on

the phosphor coated CRT screen, the writing is done with the
help of a fine-mesh wire grid.
 The grid made of very thin, high quality wire, and is
mounted just before the screen on the path of the electron
beam from the gun

 Flood of electrons is produced by a "flood gun”

 The flood gun floods electrons to a wire grid on which

already the primary gun has written some image
 Just behind the storage mesh is a second grid called the
collector.
 The function of the collector is to smooth out the flow of
flood electrons.
 Since a large number of electrons are produced at high
velocity by the flood gun,

 the collector grid, which is also negatively charged reduces,

the acceleration on these electrons and the resulting low
velocity flood pass through the collector

 and get attracted by the positively charged portions of the

storage mesh , but are repelled by the other portions of the
mesh which are negatively charged

 Thus, the electrons attracted by the positive charges pass

through the mesh, travel on to the phosphor coated screen and
display the picture (already drawn by primary gun)
 Advantage
 Since no refreshing is needed, complex pictures can be
displayed at very high resolutions
 Disadvantage
 Selected portions of the screen cannot be erased
 To eliminate a picture section, entire screen must be
erased & the modified picture redrawn
 Erasing & redrawing process may take several seconds