I Want to Gouge My Eyes Out With A Spoon

[imported_Reagle]

I just bought a Gateway FPD2185W LCD flat screen. Its a beautifull monitor that is just great. The only problem is that it too is hurting my eyes. .

I have one at work that is a cheap NEC and it doesnt hurt my eyes. The new Gateway at home also hurts my wifes eyes. So its not just me. The new Gateways not flickering of course but it hurts my eyes like an old CRT at 60 hz. I feel like I want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon. If its not the refresh rate and its the brightness do I have to turn down the brightness untill the screen is dark? I think I would rather try to figure out what is really happening here.

Can anyone shed any light on the root cause of this? I am suspecting that its the refresh rate despite the fact that LCDs dont refresh the same way that CRTs do. People say its the brightness but tuning it down in the NVIDIA tab only makes the monitor too dark.

My eyes are killing me, yet the LCD monitor I bought has a screen that is beyond beautifull. I have tried to adjust the brightness, but it only helps if I turn it down to where the screen is dull.

Whats happening to us here? It reminds me of the old 60hz crt days. Can anyone shed light on root causes?

Thanks!

 

[JAG87]

so many people have lighting problems in their rooms and they dont know.

if you have placed your monitor in a bad spot in your room, this is what you get. There is a real simple way to make up for your problem. buy one of those long abadjours, the ones that have a base and a 2 arms that bend in all angles, and put it on your desk. then move it so that the halogen lamp stays on top of your monitor and illuminates the area in front of your monitor. use the lamp on the medium setting, so it gives you an amber-yellowish light.

voila, no more headaches.

 

[CP5670]

It might also be the screen door effect. That bothers some people, when the sparkles make their eyes keep changing focus. I think the only solution to that is to sit further away from the monitor.

 

[imported_Reagle]

What kind of halogen lamp. You mean like this one?

http://www.lampsplus.com/products/s_halogen/14209

 

[xtknight]

Don't turn down the brightness in the NVIDIA color correction tab. That actually changes the video card's gamma look-up table, it doesn't change the brightness of the monitor's backlight! Try adjusting brightness and contrast in your monitor's settings.

 

[imported_Reagle]

Thanks I will try that xtknight. Do you think the halogen desklamp would help or is back lighting the real issue in eye strain? In my case my new monitor has colors that are beyond brilliant.

 

[xtknight]

If lowering the backlight doesn't work, you can try adding some ambient lighting, yeah. This is the reason black monitors are only certified for TCO '99, while ones with white bezels are TCO '03 certified because the white is much easier on your eyes when looking at the high-contrast monitor.

 

[kmmatney]

Even though LCDs don't "flicker" I suppose the backlight can...

What size LCD do you use at work?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: kmmatney
Even though LCDs don't "flicker" I suppose the backlight can...

Some response time reduction technologies throttle the backlight to mask the pixel transitions, I'm not sure if they are in monitors yet though. I believe ViewSonic has a black frame insertion for LCD TVs with ClearMotiv, and that would not be just setting the pixels to active (black) because they are already trying to transition to another color, so it would have to be switching the backlight off.

Regardless of that, are fluorescent lights perfectly consistent? I thought they were '50 Hz' or '60 Hz' in one way or another, or am I speaking of something else?

If I use my VP930b's super bright sRGB mode, my eyes KILL me. Fortunately I have found a setting even more conformant to sRGB standards that is not nearly as eye-gouge inducing (brightness 50/contrast 50, custom gamma curve).

In some CRT vs. LCD/eye comfort thread someone posted a link explaning different kinds of LCD eye strain. I'll try to dig that up for you.

Here it is: http://cloanto.com/users/mcb/19960719lcd.html

 

[imported_Reagle]

Thank you xtknight and kmmatney. I read the article xtknight posted above. kmmatney I use a 15" NEC at work its cheap and today I noticed its LCD is not really bright at all.

My eyes allready today are swirling and I turned my Gateway FPD2185W to the following settings:

1. brightness to 0
2. gamma to zero
3. contract to 59%

Then I set my Geforces 5950 ultas setting to default, except the gamme which i set to zero. Its a bit to dark to use like this but I want to try it out a day or two and see if it helps.

I then took this picture of my setup.

http://mpratt.phpwebhosting.com/DSC00285.jpg

I have the following comments.

1. The gateway is a super LCD. My office LCD is a NEC 15" and doesnt hurt my eyes at all. I notice its not so bright.
2. I run 1680x1050 at 60hz, the default resolution on the gateway.
3. The whites are a problem, for lack of a better word they knock my eyes out.
4. When I close my eyes I can still see the monitor sometimes.
5. I am going to try to find a "color profile" that might nerf the whites a bit.
6. I would like to hear a bit more about the "custom gamma" that xtknight uses.

Thanks for the help guys!
Reagle Beagle

P.S. One last thing, my eyes were allways sensitive I think to this. On the CRT I allways had to set it at 144 hz refresh rate or my eyes would hurt, so I made sureI had a crt and cideo card that supported that. Also if you notice in the picture there is a lamp I put a halogen lamp in and there isnt any white in the picture. Looking at the picture it looks like the screen is the lightest thing in the room, except the light but the light isnt really in my field of vision.

 

[xtknight]

Unfortunately the custom gamma is for calibrating colors and it wouldn't affect the brightness of white or anything much really. It's just for fine-tuning color accuracy. I guess you might have to settle for a monitor that's not as bright.

 

[Fistandantilis]

have you tried to change the color temp.?

 

[Childs]

My 23" Cinema display blinded me too. After awhile I guess I got used to it, till I got an LCD TV, and it blinded my from 10ft away! Still getting used to it, but its like looking right at a light bulb, especially at night when the room is dark.

 

[OnEMoReTrY]

dunno if uve experimented with it, but if the problem is that bad, one cheap solution that comes to mind is sunglasses, u can get varied strengths so you could get some fairly week sunglasses that might help your eyes. That or one of those screens that go over your monitor to make it darker.

 

[mooncancook]

Originally posted by: OnEMoReTrY
dunno if uve experimented with it, but if the problem is that bad, one cheap solution that comes to mind is sunglasses, u can get varied strengths so you could get some fairly week sunglasses that might help your eyes. That or one of those screens that go over your monitor to make it darker.

crazy as it may sound but it does work. Alternatively just make sure you have sufficient ambient light. My Dell 2005 hurts my eyes when the ambient light is not bright enough.

 

[imported_Reagle]

I think I need a fork instead of a spoon.

 

[imported_Reagle]

what is the shape of a good custom gamma curve ? xtknight whats yours like?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Reagle
what is the shape of a good custom gamma curve ? xtknight whats yours like?

It totally depends on your monitor. I modeled mine based on prad.de's review of my monitor (VP930b): http://prad.de/en/monitore/review-viewsonic-vp930-schaubild-messdiagram2.html

 

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: kmmatney
Even though LCDs don't "flicker" I suppose the backlight can...

Some response time reduction technologies throttle the backlight to mask the pixel transitions, I'm not sure if they are in monitors yet though. I believe ViewSonic has a black frame insertion for LCD TVs with ClearMotiv, and that would not be just setting the pixels to active (black) because they are already trying to transition to another color, so it would have to be switching the backlight off.

Regardless of that, are fluorescent lights perfectly consistent? I thought they were '50 Hz' or '60 Hz' in one way or another, or am I speaking of something else?

Fluorescent's are not perfectly consistant and they strobe at 120hz (2x AC) but a modern electronic ballast fluorescent is much more consistant than an incandescent. (An old magnetic ballast will suck however). The ballast in a monitor is no doubt an electronic one so that shouldn't be the problem.

And yeah, anti-ghosting technologies like you describe exist but I don't think they're used in any computer monitors yet. Isn't sort of technology called "impulse black" or something like that? Once LED backlighting is prevalent, stuff like that may take off.

 

[zephyrprime]

Try reducing contrast and turning on the lights in your room. You want to make the screen look "blander"

 

[imported_Reagle]

Thanks for your help guys. I took my new gateway FPD2185W back to BB, and I was very disapointed to turn it back in. It played games perfectly and was a super flatpanel.

So I am back to my Hitachi Superscan Elite 751 CRT. I run it at 800 x 600 at 144 hz.

So now I will take my time and see if I can find a flatpanel out there that will not hurt my eyes.

Any ideas on which LCD might be the easiest on the eyes?

 

[JMWarren]

Originally posted by: Reagle

So I am back to my Hitachi Superscan Elite 751 CRT. I run it at 800 x 600 at 144 hz.

I hope your running not running 800x600 for windows, even for games i think i'd be asking to borrow your fork

 

[imported_Reagle]

The 144 hz refresh rate on this crt is the only thing so far that allows me to spend long times in front of the computer without problems.

Most CRTs dont support such high refresh rates except at low resolutions like 800x 600.