What Does It Mean?

jbtsax

jbtsax

Distinguished Member
Distinguished Member
Since I am technologically challenged, I'm hoping one of the computer savvy members will know the answer. My monitor frequently and without warning will go to a pale pea green color which then goes to thin vertical colored lines in various places. I have found that giving the monitor a hard "Fonzie" slap on the top or sides usually restores the normal screen.

My question is: What does this mean?

It is a 24" Soyo brand that is about 7 years old. Thanks.
 
Image errors like these (it's a flat screen monitor, right?) often come from stray electrons in the power supply (filter capacitor considering going bad), or some electrical connector (board -> wire) getting stale.

Percussive maintenance as described may correct the bad connector issue for a while, but generally it's still a mystery to me why a bang should work at all.

Unless you have a TV repair buddy who owes you a favour, it's often uneconomical to repair these beasts or even just exchange complete part assemblies. Maybe you should start earmarking money towards a new one. All you could possibly do would be to open the back and re-seat every connector wire (eg from Power supply, from/to signal cable etc.). Be sure to unplug one hour before.

Same with a CRT monitor, except that tampering with its innards is strongly discouraged.
 
You might also want to check that your video cable -- the thing that connects the monitor to the computer -- is screwed in tight both where it connects to the computer and where it connects to the monitor. I'd also suggest either buying a new video cable (they're dirt cheap) or stealing a cable off of a monitor you know is working.

IF you have a flat panel monitor with an IPS panel -- and you'll know if you bought one; it would have been very pricey -- it actually is more cost-effective to get it repaired, in a lot of cases. If you've just got a 1080p ("high-def") flat panel, a 24" is around $180 to replace. If you've got a CRT ("old TV-like") monitor, you're not going to be able to buy another one. Unless you enjoy $200 shipping charges :).
 
I'd think that a 7yo monitor - CRT or otherwise - may be near its End Of Life...
 
Not necessarily. I had a Mitsubishi 21" CRT (Yes, it weighed 150lbs. I read the box) that worked for more than 10 years before I got rid of it. I've got folks I support right now that have even older ones. I've even got a 22" Mitsubishi in storage. Just in case. Of course, my TV's a 32" CRT, too :).

CRTs were very good for a lot of things, especially if you happen to like 480i ("standard TV") videos or if you've got a job where you have to do color correction. However, considering my Mitsubishis would also warm up my office rapidly, which is not an asset in Phoenix, AZ, when I was given the opportunity I bought flat panels.

BTW, I've mentioned "IPS" a couple times and I've mentioned "TFT" in this post. For all the gory details, you can hop on any video website and/or Wikipedia. In plain English, an IPS displays color a lot nicer than most TFTs, especially if you're looking at one color blending into another. They're also more expensive -- they used to be a LOT more expensive, but now it's not as much. For example, a 21.5" ASUS IPS is all of $15 more expensive than its TFT brother. However, if you're talking bigger, there's a larger price jump, especially going from 24" (cheapest, around $300) to 27" (cheapest, around $680).

However, when you get into bigger IPS panels, you get into higher resolution. The 30" Dell U3011 is a 2560 x 1600 monitor, so that's a "1600p" display; your 1080p TV is inadequate! It's also $1200. (The Dell U-series/Apple Cinema IPS monitors are generally considered the absolute best that are on the market. You've also gotta keep that in mind.)

There are some other fiddly bits about IPS panels. Literally: 8-bit, 10-bit, etc. However, unless you're REALLY into graphics, you're not going to notice that much of a difference between an 8-bit IPS and 10-bit one. Other than the 10-bit one is a lot more expensive.
 
I bought a 24" DEll IPS 8 years ago for photo work. Cost a lot. Caibrated it. Still calibrate it every now and again. Colours are still as good as the day I got it. 24" seemed huge then. Now it's average.
 
Yep. However, I am happy that the 24" one have come down in price significantly. I can think about buying one if one of my other monitors die.
 
Thanks to the acronymic education I got from this thread (is that even a word?) I have purchased a LG 23" IPS online from Best Buy for around $230 including tax and minus a $25 gift card I got for Christmas. I will pick it up tomorrow.

Thanks to Pete and Tictactux for all the information. As I was reading your posts, I kept repeating the title of my thread over and over to myself. :) Finally with the help of Google and Wickipedia I was able to make enough sense of the technogab to decide what to buy.

I have slapped my monitor "up side the head" 4 times while writing this post just to see what I have written. Make that 6. . . 7. . .
 
If you're getting the LG Flatron IPS231, that's the one I have. Highly reviewed. Been running strong for about a year. It's a bit bright, so you might want to turn that down a bit when you get it home and after you've let it run for a bit.
 
The model is the IPS 235, probably a more recent version of the one you have. It looks really nice. Would you recommend an upgraded cable? I think the one I have is a Belkin svga.
 
jbtsax said:
The model is the IPS 235, probably a more recent version of the one you have. It looks really nice. Would you recommend an upgraded cable? I think the one I have is a Belkin svga.
Click to expand...
It should come with cables, unless they're cheaping out.

If your video card has an HDMI or DVI out, you might want to think about getting an HDMI or DVI cable instead of using VGA (or, as manufacturers have been taking to call it recently, "D-Sub"). In some instances, I've seen and other people have reported a significant increase in sharpness. There is a "however": maybe 50% of the time, I can get the same sharpness with a better quality VGA cable. Belkin's a good cable.

That HDMI/DVI has a couple other fun things. My cable TV box has outputs for it. I used a converter cable (DVI to HDMI; my monitor doesn't have a DVI port) to connect it directly to my monitor and used it to play HD TV; no computer needed. Well, for about a month. I didn't watch enough TV and the HD box was an extra $10 a month ....
 
Big difference in sharpness for me between VGA and DVI, especially at higher res/the screen's native res. It was worth the small extra to get a new (bottom of the range) graphics card with DVI output. I didn't try a better cable, as the advice I got at the time was 'Digital end to end'.

Did the same when we got a new TV recently, ran it on analogue for ages, was pretty unhappy. Bought an HDMI cable, the difference was immense.

Incidently, Pete alludes to it, but doesn't say it outright - the DVI/HDMI signals are identical. So converters/adapters can work well as it's only a cabling/plug change. Differences are that HDMI can carry sound (and ethernet on later versions) and that HDMI can pretty much always handle the HDCP encrypted signals on copy protected DVDs, DVI often doesn't.
 
Test Pattern for analog monitors

For those who still have their flat screen on an analog cable (or an analog-only flat screen) - picture sharpness is always a problem.

Most monitors if not all have an "auto" button/menu that optimises the image sync/position/size; however, you need a suitable background pattern for this to work well. (the "auto" function needs lots of edges and contrasts)

Back in the days, IBM shipped a utility with their monitors that painted a test pattern on the monitor, and with that one "Auto Setup" was a breeze.

Unfortunately, this utility doesn't work with Windows 7 any longer, so I set up a small html page that mimics the same. Just navigate there, set your Browser to Kiosk mode (F11 aka Full Screen), press the "Auto" button on your monitor and you're in business.
Works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome/Iron, Opera, and probably on Apple devices as well. Just be sure to set the zoom on the browser to 100%.
 
For the technology impaired like myself, it would have been nice to know that pressing F11 again exits full screen mode. :)
 
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