LCD Phase
June 12th, 2005
If you’re using an LCD monitor, check the settings. See if there’s an option for ‘phase’, it’s under ‘Image settings’ on my Dell screen. I use a Philips screen at work and I’ve remarked more than once how much better it is than my Dell. It’s pixel sharp whilst at home there’s just the tiniest smearing out of detail. Not enough for me to have even registered it before I started using a better screen.
Today I was playing with the brightness on the Dell and as I browsed the menus I noticed a ‘phase’ setting. I didn’t even know what this was for, but to my amazement 30 seconds of tweaking got the LCD looking as good as the Philips. Fantastic! Soon I’ll get used to it, but right now it’s a pleasure.
To figure out what was happening I employed the Explorer, a Swiss army knife Lara had chosen for me specifically for the magnifying glass it was equipped with. Examining the pixels up close as I played with the phase showed me what was happening. By default it had been set with the physical pixels that composed the screen almost exactly misaligned with the pixels that were output by the computer. I’m running the screen at its native resolution and I’d been seeing a sort of hardware anti-aliasing.
I haven’t had any trouble at all with this box since the considerable trouble I had getting it in the first place, so I can still recommend Dell. And now I have conclusively defeated them, fallacious factory settings and all. Check your phase, people. You could be missing out.